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The Commonwealth of Oceana

by James Harrington · English · Gutenberg #2801 · 659,592 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Commonwealth of Oceana

Author: James Harrington


        
Release date: September 1, 2001 [eBook #2801]
                Most recently updated: January 19, 2018

Language: English

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OCEANA

By James Harrington




INTRODUCTION TO OCEANA

JAMES HARRINGTON, eldest son of Sir Sapcotes Harrington of Exton, in
Rutlandshire, was born in the reign of James I, in January, 1611, five
years before the death of Shakespeare. He was two or three years younger
than John Milton. His great-grandfather was Sir James Harrington, who
married Lucy, daughter of Sir William Sidney, lived with her to their
golden wedding-day, and had eighteen children, through whom he counted
himself, before his death, patriarch in a family that in his own time
produced eight dukes, three marquises, seventy earls, twenty-seven
viscounts, and thirty-six barons, sixteen of them all being Knights of
the Garter. James Harrington’s ideal of a commonwealth was the design,
therefore, of a man in many ways connected with the chief nobility of
England.

Sir Sapcotes Harrington married twice, and had by each of his wives two
sons and two daughters. James Harrington was eldest son by the first
marriage, which was to Jane, daughter of Sir William Samuel of Upton, in
Northamptonshire. James Harrington’s brother became a merchant; of his
half-brothers, one went to sea, the other became a captain in the army.

As a child, James Harrington was studious, and so sedate that it was
said playfully of him he rather kept his parents and teachers in awe
than needed correction; but in after-life his quick wit made him full of
playfulness in conversation. In 1629 he entered Trinity College, Oxford,
as a gentleman commoner. There he had for tutor William Chillingworth,
a Fellow of the college, who after conversion to the Church of Rome had
reasoned his way back into Protestant opinions. Chillingworth became a
famous champion of Protestantism in the question between the Churches,
although many Protestants attacked him as unsound because he would not
accept the Athanasian Creed and had some other reservations.

Harrington prepared himself for foreign travel by study of modern
languages, but before he went abroad, and while he was still under age,
his father died and he succeeded to his patrimony. The socage tenure of
his estate gave him free choice of his own guardian, and he chose his
mother’s mother, Lady Samuel.

He then began the season of travel which usually followed studies at the
university, a part of his training to which he had looked forward with
especial interest. He went first to Holland, which had been in Queen
Elizabeth’s time the battle-ground of civil and religious liberty.
Before he left England he used to say he knew of monarchy, anarchy,
aristocracy, democracy, oligarchy, only as hard words to be looked for
in a dictionary. But his interest in problems of government began to be
awakened while he was among the Dutch. He served in the regiment of
Lord Craven, and afterward in that of Sir Robert Stone; was much at The
Hague; became familiar with the Court of the Prince of Orange, and with
King James’s daughter, the Queen of Bohemia, who, with her husband the
Prince Elector, was then a fugitive to Holland. Lord Harrington, who had
once acted as governor to the princess, and won her affection, was James
Harrington’s uncle, and she now cordially welcomed the young student of
life for his uncle’s sake, and for his own pleasantness of outward wit
and inward gravity of thought. Harrington was taken with him by the
exiled and plundered Prince Elector, when he paid a visit to the Court
of Denmark, and he was intrusted afterward with the chief care of the
prince’s affairs in England.

From Holland, James Harrington passed through Flanders into France, and
thence to Italy. When he came back to England, some courtiers who were
with him in Rome told Charles I that Harrington had been too squeamish
at the Pope’s consecration of wax lights, in refusing to obtain a light,
as others did, by kissing his Holiness’s toe. The King told Harrington
that he might have complied with a custom which only signified respect
to a temporal prince. But his Majesty was satisfied with the reply, that
having had the honor to kiss his Majesty’s hand, he thought it beneath
him to kiss any other prince’s foot.

Of all places in Italy, Venice pleased Harrington best. He was deeply
interested in the Venetian form of government, and his observations
bore fruit in many suggestions for the administration of the
Commonwealth of Oceana.

After his return to England, being of age, James Harrington cared
actively for the interests of his younger brothers and sisters. It was
he who made his brother William a merchant. William Harrington throve,
and for his ingenuity in matters of construction he was afterward made
one of the Fellows of the newly formed Royal Society. He took pains over
the training of his sisters, making no difference between sisters and
half-sisters, and treating his step-mother as a mother. He filled
his home with loving-kindness, and was most liberal in giving help
to friends. When he was told that he often threw away his bounty on
ungrateful persons, he playfully told his advisers they were mercenary
and that he saw they sold their gifts, since they expected so great a
return as gratitude.

James Harrington’s bent was for the study of life, and he made no active
suit for court employment. But he went to court, where Charles I liked
him, and admitted him as one of his privy chamber extraordinary, in
which character he went with the King in his first expedition against
the Scots.

Because Charles I knew him and liked him, and because he had shown
himself no partisan of either side in the civil war, though he was
known to be inclined, in the way of abstract opinion, toward a form of
government that was not monarchy, the commissioners appointed in 1646
to bring Charles from Newcastle named Harrington as one of the King’s
attendants. The King was pleased, and Harrington was appointed a groom
of the bedchamber at Holmby. He followed faithfully the fortunes of
the fallen King, never saying even to the King himself a word in
contradiction of his own principles of liberty, and finding nothing
in his principles or in his temper that should prevent him from paying
honor to his sovereign, and seeking to secure for him a happy issue
out of his afflictions. Antony à Wood says that, “His Majesty loved
Harrington’s company, and, finding him to be an ingenious man, chose
rather to converse with him than with others of his chamber: they had
often discourses concerning government; but when they happened to talk
of a commonwealth the King seemed not to endure it.”

Harrington used all the influence he had with those in whose power the
King was, to prevent the urging of avoidable questions that would stand
in the way of such a treaty as they professed to seek during the King’s
imprisonment at Carisbrooke. Harrington’s friendly interventions on the
King’s behalf before the Parliament commissioners at Newport caused
him, indeed, to be suspected; and when the King was removed from
Carisbrooke to Hurst Castle, Harrington was not allowed to remain in his
service. But afterward, when King Charles was being taken to Windsor,
Harrington got leave to bid him farewell at the door of his carriage. As
he was about to kneel, the King took him by the hand and pulled him in.
For a few days he was left with the King, but an oath was required of
him that he would not assist in, or conceal knowledge of any attempt
to procure, the King’s escape. He would not take the oath; and was this
time not only dismissed from the King’s service but himself imprisoned,
until Ireton obtained his release. Before the King’s death, Harrington
found his way to him again, and he was among those who were with Charles
I upon the scaffold.

After the King’s execution, Harrington was for some time secluded in
his study. Monarchy was gone; some form of commonwealth was to be
established; and he set to work upon the writing of “Oceana,” calmly
to show what form of government, since men were free to choose, to him
seemed best.

He based his work on an opinion he had formed that the troubles of
the time were not due wholly to the intemperance of faction, the
misgovernment of a king, or the stubbornness of a people, but to
change in the balance of property; and he laid the foundations of his
commonwealth in the opinion that empire follows the balance of property.
Then he showed the commonwealth of Oceana in action, with safeguards
against future shiftings of that balance, and with a popular government
in which all offices were filled by men chosen by ballot, who should
hold office for a limited term. Thus there was to be a constant flow of
new blood through the political system, and the representative was to be
kept true as a reflection of the public mind.

The Commonwealth of Oceana was England. Harrington called Scotland
Marpesia; and Ireland, Panopea. London he called Emporium; the Thames,
Halcionia; Westminster, Hiera; Westminster Hall, Pantheon. The Palace of
St. James was Alma; Hampton Court, Convallium; Windsor, Mount Celia. By
Hemisna, Harrington meant the river Trent. Past sovereigns of England
he renamed for Oceana: William the Conqueror became Turbo; King John,
Adoxus; Richard II, Dicotome; Henry VII, Panurgus; Henry VIII, Coraunus;
Elizabeth, Parthenia; James I, Morpheus. He referred to Hobbes as
Leviathan; and to Francis Bacon, as Verulamius. Oliver Cromwell he
renamed Olphaus Megaletor.

Harrington’s book was seized while printing, and carried to Whitehall.
Harrington went to Cromwell’s daughter, Lady Claypole, played with her
three-year-old child while waiting for her, and said to her, when she
came and found him with her little girl upon his lap, “Madam, you have
come in the nick of time, for I was just about to steal this pretty
lady.” “Why should you?” “Why shouldn’t I, unless you cause your father
to restore a child of mine that he has stolen?” It was only, he said,
a kind of political romance; so far from any treason against her father
that he hoped she would let him know it was to be dedicated to him. So
the book was restored; and it was published in the time of Cromwell’s
Commonwealth, in the year 1656.

This treatise, which had its origin in the most direct pressure of the
problem of government upon the minds of men continues the course of
thought on which Machiavelli’s “Prince” had formed one famous station,
and Hobbes’s “Leviathan,” another.

“Oceana,” when published, was widely read and actively attacked. One
opponent of its doctrines was Dr. Henry Ferne, afterward Bishop of
Chester. Another was Matthew Wren, eldest son to the Bishop of Ely.
He was one of those who met for scientific research at the house of Dr.
Wilkins, and had, said Harrington, “an excellent faculty of magnifying
a louse and diminishing a commonwealth.”

In 1659, Harrington published an abridgment of his Oceana as “The Art of
Lawgiving,” in three books. Other pieces followed, in which he
defended or developed his opinions. He again urged them when Cromwell’s
Commonwealth was in its death-throes. Then he fell back upon argument
at nightly meetings of a Rota Club which met in the New Palace Yard,
Westminster. Milton’s old pupil, Cyriac Skinner, was one of its members;
and its elections were by ballot, with rotation in the tenure of all
offices. The club was put an end to at the Restoration, when Harrington
retired to his study and amused himself by putting his “System of
Politics” into the form of “Aphorisms.”

On December 28, 1661, James Harrington, then fifty years old, was
arrested and carried to the Tower as a traitor. His Aphorisms were on
his desk, and as they also were to be carried off, he asked only that
they might first be stitched together in their proper order. Why he was
arrested, he was not told. One of his sisters pleaded in vain to the
King. He was falsely accused of complicity in an imaginary plot, of
which nothing could be made by its investigators. No heed was paid
to the frank denials of a man of the sincerest nature, who never had
concealed his thoughts or actions. “Why,” he was asked, at his first
examination by Lord Lauderdale, who was one of his kinsmen, “why did
he, as a private man, meddle with politics? What had a private man to
do with government?” His answer was: “My lord, there is not any public
person, nor any magistrate, that has written on politics, worth a
button. All they that have been excellent in this way have been private
men, as private men, my lord, as myself. There is Plato, there is
Aristotle, there is Livy, there is Machiavel. My lord, I can sum up
Aristotle’s ‘Politics’ in a very few words: he says, there is the
Barbarous Monarchy--such a one where the people have no votes in making
the laws; he says, there is the Heroic Monarchy--such a one where the
people have their votes in making the laws; and then, he says, there is
Democracy, and affirms that a man cannot be said to have liberty but in
a democracy only.” Lord Lauderdale here showing impatience, Harrington
added: “I say Aristotle says so. I have not said so much. And under what
prince was it? Was it not under Alexander, the greatest prince then in
the world? I beseech you, my lord, did Alexander hang up Aristotle? did
he molest him? Livy, for a commonwealth, is one of the fullest authors;
did not he write under Augustus Caesar? Did Caesar hang up Livy? did
he molest him? Machiavel, what a commonwealthsman was he! but he wrote
under the Medici when they were princes in Florence: did they hang up
Machiavel, or did they molest him? I have done no otherwise than as the
greatest politicians: the King will do no otherwise than as the greatest
princes.”

That was too much to hope, even in a dream, of the low-minded Charles
II. Harrington could not obtain even the show of justice in a public
trial. He was kept five months an untried prisoner in the Tower, only
sheltered from daily brutalities by bribe to the lieutenant. When his
habeas corpus had been moved for, it was at first flatly refused; and
when it had been granted, Harrington was smuggled away from the Tower
between one and two o’clock in the morning, and carried on board a ship
that took him to closer imprisonment on St. Nicholas Island, opposite
Plymouth. There his health suffered seriously, and his family obtained
his removal to imprisonment in Plymouth by giving a bond of £5,000
as sureties against his escape. In Plymouth, Harrington suffered from
scurvy, and at last he became insane.

When he had been made a complete wreck in body and in mind, his gracious
Majesty restored Harrington to his family. He never recovered health,
but still occupied himself much with his pen, writing, among other
things, a serious argument to prove that they were themselves mad who
thought him so.

In those last days of his shattered life James Harrington married an old
friend of the family, a witty lady, daughter of Sir Marmaduke Dorrell,
of Buckinghamshire. Gout was added to his troubles; then he was
palsied; and he died at Westminster, at the age of sixty-six, on
September 11, 1677. He was buried in St. Margaret’s Church, by the grave
of Sir Walter Raleigh, on the south side of the altar.

H. M.





OCEANA




PART I. THE PRELIMINARIES

Showing the Principles of Government

JANOTTI, the most excellent describer of the Commonwealth of Venice,
divides the whole series of government into two times or periods: the
one ending with the liberty of Rome, which was the course or empire, as
I may call it, of ancient prudence, first discovered to mankind by
God himself in the fabric of the commonwealth of Israel, and afterward
picked out of his footsteps in nature, and unanimously followed by the
Greeks and Romans; the other beginning with the arms of Caesar, which,
extinguishing liberty, were the transition of ancient into modern
prudence, introduced by those inundations of Huns, Goths, Vandals,
Lombards, Saxons, which, breaking the Roman Empire, deformed the whole
face of the world with those ill-features of government, which at this
time are become far worse in these western parts, except Venice, which,
escaping the hands of the barbarians by virtue of its impregnable
situation, has had its eye fixed upon ancient prudence, and is attained
to a perfection even beyond the copy.

Relation being had to these two times, government (to define it de jure,
or according to ancient prudence) is an art whereby a civil society of
men is instituted and preserved upon the foundation of common right or
interest; or, to follow Aristotle and Livy, it is the empire of laws,
and not of men.

And government (to define it de facto, or according to modern prudence)
is an art whereby some man, or some few men, subject a city or a nation,
and rule it according to his or their private interest; which, because
the laws in such cases are made according to the interest of a man, or
of some few families, may be said to be the empire of men, and not of
laws.

The former kind is that which Machiavel (whose books are neglected) is
the only politician that has gone about to retrieve; and that Leviathan
(who would have his book imposed upon the universities) goes about to
destroy. For “it is,” says he, “another error of Aristotle’s politics
that in a well-ordered commonwealth, not men should govern, but the
laws. What man that has his natural senses, though he can neither write
nor read, does not find himself governed by them he fears, and believes
can kill or hurt him when he obeys not? or, who believes that the law
can hurt him, which is but words and paper, without the hands and swords
of men?” I confess that the magistrate upon his bench is that to the
law which a gunner upon his platform is to his cannon. Nevertheless, I
should not dare to argue with a man of any ingenuity after this manner.
A whole army, though they can neither write nor read, are not afraid
of a platform, which they know is but earth or stone; nor of a cannon,
which, without a hand to give fire to it, is but cold iron; therefore a
whole army is afraid of one man. But of this kind is the ratiocination
of Leviathan, as I shall show in divers places that come in my way,
throughout his whole politics, or worse; as where he says, “of Aristotle
and of Cicero, of the Greeks, and of the Romans, who lived under popular
States, that they derived those rights, not from the principles of
nature, but transcribed them into their books out of the practice of
their own commonwealths, as grammarians describe the rules of language
out of poets.” Which is as if a man should tell famous Harvey that he
transcribed his circulation of the blood, not out of the principles of
nature, but out of the anatomy of this or that body.

To go on therefore with his preliminary discourse, I shall divide it,
according to the two definitions of government relating to Janotti’s two
times, in two parts: the first, treating of the principles of government
in general, and according to the ancients; the second, treating of
the late governments of Oceana in particular, and in that of modern
prudence.

Government, according to the ancients, and their learned disciple
Machiavel, the only politician of later ages, is of three kinds: the
government of one man, or of the better sort, or of the whole people;
which, by their more learned names, are called monarchy, aristocracy,
and democracy. These they hold, through their proneness to degenerate,
to be all evil. For whereas they that govern should govern according
to reason, if they govern according to passion they do that which they
should not do. Wherefore, as reason and passion are two things, so
government by reason is one thing, and the corruption of government by
passion is another thing, but not always another government: as a body
that is alive is one thing, and a body that is dead is another thing,
but not always another creature, though the corruption of one comes at
length to be the generation of another. The corruption then of monarchy
is called tyranny; that of aristocracy, oligarchy and that of democracy,
anarchy. But legislators, having found these three governments at the
best to be naught, have invented another, consisting of a mixture of
them all, which only is good. This is the doctrine of the ancients.

But Leviathan is positive that they are all deceived, and that there is
no other government in nature than one of the three; as also that the
flesh of them cannot stink, the names of their corruptions being but the
names of men’s fancies, which will be understood when we are shown which
of them was Senatus Populusque Romanus.

To go my own way, and yet to follow the ancients, the principles
of government are twofold: internal, or the goods of the mind; and
external, or the goods of fortune. The goods of the mind are natural or
acquired virtues, as wisdom, prudence, and courage, etc. The goods of
fortune are riches. There be goods also of the body, as health, beauty,
strength; but these are not to be brought into account upon this score,
because if a man or an army acquires victory or empire, it is more from
their discipline, arms, and courage than from their natural health,
beauty, or strength, in regard that a people conquered may have more of
natural strength, beauty, and health, and yet find little remedy. The
principles of government then are in the goods of the mind, or in the
goods of fortune. To the goods of the mind answers authority; to the
goods of fortune, power or empire. Wherefore Leviathan, though he be
right where he says that “riches are power,” is mistaken where he
says that “prudence, or the reputation of prudence, is power;” for the
learning or prudence of a man is no more power than the learning or
prudence of a book or author, which is properly authority. A learned
writer may have authority though he has no power; and a foolish
magistrate may have power, though he has otherwise no esteem or
authority. The difference of these two is observed by Livy in Evander,
of whom he says that he governed rather by the authority of others than
by his own power.

To begin with riches, in regard that men are hung upon these, not of
choice as upon the other, but of necessity and by the teeth; forasmuch
as he who wants bread is his servant that will feed him, if a man thus
feeds a whole people, they are under his empire.

Empire is of two kinds, domestic and national, or foreign and
provincial.

Domestic empire is founded upon dominion. Dominion is property, real or
personal; that is to say, in lands, or in money and goods.

Lands, or the parts and parcels of a territory, are held by the
proprietor or proprietors, lord or lords of it, in some proportion;
and such (except it be in a city that has little or no land, and whose
revenue is in trade) as is the proportion or balance of dominion or
property in land, such is the nature of the empire.

If one man be sole landlord of a territory, or overbalance the people,
for example, three parts in four, he is grand seignior; for so the Turk
is called from his property, and his empire is absolute monarchy.

If the few or a nobility, or a nobility with the clergy, be landlords,
or overbalance the people to the like proportion, it makes the Gothic
balance (to be shown at large in the second part of this discourse),
and the empire is mixed monarchy, as that of Spain, Poland, and late of
Oceana.

And if the whole people be landlords, or hold the lands so divided among
them that no one man, or number of men, within the compass of the few or
aristocracy, overbalance them, the empire (without the interposition of
force) is a commonwealth.

If force be interposed in any of these three cases, it must either frame
the government to the foundation, or the foundation to the government;
or holding the government not according to the balance, it is not
natural, but violent; and therefore if it be at the devotion of a
prince, it is tyranny; if at the devotion of the few, oligarchy; or
if in the power of the people, anarchy: Each of which confusions, the
balance standing otherwise, is but of short continuance, because against
the nature of the balance, which, not destroyed, destroys that which
opposes it.

But there be certain other confusions, which, being rooted in the
balance, are of longer continuance, and of worse consequence; as, first,
where a nobility holds half the property, or about that proportion, and
the people the other half; in which case, without altering the balance
there is no remedy but the one must eat out the other, as the people did
the nobility in Athens, and the nobility the people in Rome. Secondly,
when a prince holds about half the dominion, and the people the other
half (which was the case of the Roman emperors, planted partly upon
their military colonies and partly upon the Senate and the people), the
government becomes a very shambles, both of the princes and the people.
Somewhat of this nature are certain governments at this day, which are
said to subsist by confusion. In this case, to fix the balance is to
entail misery; but in the three former, not to fix it is to lose the
government. Wherefore it being unlawful in Turkey that any should
possess land but the Grand Seignior, the balance is fixed by the law,
and that empire firm. Nor, though the kings often sell was the throne
of Oceana known to shake, until the statute of alienations broke the
pillars, by giving way to the nobility to sell their estates. While
Lacedaemon held to the division of land made by Lycurgus, it was
immovable; but, breaking that, could stand no longer. This kind of law
fixing the balance in lands is called agrarian, and was first introduced
by God himself, who divided the land of Canaan to his people by lots,
and is of such virtue that wherever it has held, that government has
not altered, except by consent; as in that unparalleled example of the
people of Israel, when being in liberty they would needs choose a
king. But without an agrarian law, government, whether monarchical,
aristocratical, or popular, has no long lease.

As for dominion, personal or in money, it may now and then stir up a
Melius or a Manlius, which, if the Commonwealth be not provided with
some kind of dictatorian power, may be dangerous, though it has been
seldom or never successful; because to property producing empire, it
is required that it should have some certain root or foothold, which,
except in land, it cannot have, being otherwise as it were upon the
wing.

Nevertheless, in such cities as subsist mostly by trade, and have little
or no land, as Holland and Genoa, the balance of treasure may be equal
to that of land in the cases mentioned.

But Leviathan, though he seems to skew at antiquity, following his
furious master Carneades, has caught hold of the public sword, to which
he reduces all manner and matter of government; as, where he affirms
this opinion (that any monarch receives his power by covenant; that is
to say, upon conditions) “to proceed from the not understanding this
easy truth, that covenants being but words and breath, have no power to
oblige, contain, constrain, or protect any man, but what they have from
the public sword.” But as he said of the law, that without this sword
it is but paper, so he might have thought of this sword, that without a
hand it is but cold iron. The hand which holds this sword is the militia
of a nation; and the militia of a nation is either an army in the field,
or ready for the field upon occasion. But an army is a beast that has a
great belly, and must be fed: wherefore this will come to what pastures
you have, and what pastures you have will come to the balance of
property, without which the public sword is but a name or mere spitfrog.
Wherefore, to set that which Leviathan says of arms and of contracts a
little straighter, he that can graze this beast with the great belly,
as the Turk does his Timariots, may well deride him that imagines he
received his power by covenant, or is obliged to any such toy. It being
in this case only that covenants are but words and breath. But if the
property of the nobility, stocked with their tenants and retainers, be
the pasture of that beast, the ox knows his master’s crib; and it is
impossible for a king in such a constitution to reign otherwise than by
covenant; or if he break it, it is words that come to blows.

“But,” says he, “when an assembly of men is made sovereign, then no man
imagines any such covenant to have part in the institution.” But what
was that by Publicola of appeal to the people, or that whereby the
people had their tribunes? “Fie,” says he, “nobody is so dull as to say
that the people of Rome made a covenant with the Romans, to hold the
sovereignty on such or such conditions, which, not performed, the Romans
might depose the Roman people.” In which there be several remarkable
things; for he holds the Commonwealth of Rome to have consisted of one
assembly, whereas it consisted of the Senate and the people; that they
were not upon covenant, whereas every law enacted by them was a covenant
between them; that the one assembly was made sovereign, whereas the
people, who only were sovereign, were such from the beginning, as
appears by the ancient style of their covenants or laws--“The Senate has
resolved, the people have decreed,” that a council being made sovereign,
cannot be made such upon conditions, whereas the Decemvirs being a
council that was made sovereign, was made such upon conditions; that all
conditions or covenants making a sovereign being made, are void; whence
it must follow that, the Decemviri being made, were ever after the
lawful government of Rome, and that it was unlawful for the Commonwealth
of Rome to depose the Decemvirs; as also that Cicero, if he wrote
otherwise out of his commonwealth, did not write out of nature. But to
come to others that see more of this balance.

You have Aristotle full of it in divers places, especially where he
says, that “immoderate wealth, as where one man or the few have greater
possessions than the equality or the frame of the commonwealth will
bear, is an occasion of sedition, which ends for the greater part in
monarchy and that for this cause the ostracism has been received in
divers places, as in Argos and Athens. But that it were better to
prevent the growth in the beginning, than, when it has got head, to seek
the remedy of such an evil.”

Machiavel has missed it very narrowly and more dangerously for not fully
perceiving that if a commonwealth be galled by the gentry it is by their
overbalance, he speaks of the gentry as hostile to popular governments,
and of popular governments as hostile to the gentry; and makes us
believe that the people in such are so enraged against them, that where
they meet a gentleman they kill him: which can never be proved by any
one example, unless in civil war, seeing that even in Switzerland the
gentry are not only safe, but in honor. But the balance, as I have laid
it down, though unseen by Machiavel, is that which interprets him, and
that which he confirms by his judgment in many others as well as in
this place, where he concludes, “That he who will go about to make a
commonwealth where there be many gentlemen, unless he first destroys
them, undertakes an impossibility. And that he who goes about to
introduce monarchy where the condition of the people is equal, shall
never bring it to pass, unless he cull out such of them as are the most
turbulent and ambitious, and make them gentlemen or noblemen, not in
name but in effect; that is, by enriching them with lands, castles, and
treasures, that may gain them power among the rest, and bring in the
rest to dependence upon themselves, to the end that, they maintaining
their ambition by the prince, the prince may maintain his power by
them.”

Wherefore, as in this place I agree with Machiavel, that a nobility
or gentry, overbalancing a popular government, is the utter bane and
destruction of it; so I shall show in another, that a nobility or
gentry, in a popular government, not overbalancing it, is the very life
and soul of it.

By what has been said, it should seem that we may lay aside further
disputes of the public sword, or of the right of the militia; which, be
the government what it will, or let it change how it can, is inseparable
from the overbalance in dominion: nor, if otherwise stated by the law
or custom (as in the Commonwealth of Rome, where the people having the
sword, the nobility came to have the overbalance), avails it to
any other end than destruction. For as a building swaying from the
foundation must fall, so it fares with the law swaying from reason, and
the militia from the balance of dominion. And thus much for the balance
of national or domestic empire, which is in dominion.

The balance of foreign or provincial empire is of a contrary nature. A
man may as well say that it is unlawful for him who has made a fair and
honest purchase to have tenants, as for a government that has made a
just progress and enlargement of itself to have provinces. But how a
province may be justly acquired appertains to another place. In this
I am to show no more than how or upon what kind of balance it is to be
held; in order whereto I shall first show upon what kind of balance
it is not to be held. It has been said, that national or independent
empire, of what kind soever, is to be exercised by them that have
the proper balance of dominion in the nation; wherefore provincial or
dependent empire is not to be exercised by them that have the balance of
dominion in the province, because that would bring the government
from provincial and dependent, to national and independent. Absolute
monarchy, as that of the Turks, neither plants its people at home nor
abroad, otherwise than as tenants for life or at will; wherefore its
national and provincial government is all one. But in governments that
admit the citizen or subject to dominion in lands, the richest are they
that share most of the power at home; whereas the richest among
the provincials, though native subjects, or citizens that have been
transplanted, are least admitted to the government abroad; for men, like
flowers or roots being transplanted, take after the soil wherein they
grow. Wherefore the Commonwealth of Rome, by planting colonies of its
citizens within the bounds of Italy, took the best way of propagating
itself, and naturalizing the country; whereas if it had planted such
colonies without the bounds of Italy it would have alienated the
citizens, and given a root to liberty abroad, that might have sprung up
foreign or savage, and hostile to her: wherefore it never made any such
dispersion of itself and its strength, till it was under the yoke of
the Emperors, who, disburdening themselves of the people, as having less
apprehension of what they could do abroad than at home, took a contrary
course.

The Mamelukes (which, till any man show me the contrary, I shall presume
to have been a commonwealth consisting of an army, whereof the common
soldier was the people, the commissioned officer the Senate, and the
general the prince) were foreigners, and by nation Circassians, that
governed Egypt; wherefore these never durst plant themselves upon
dominion, which growing naturally up into the national interest, must
have dissolved the foreign yoke in that province.

The like in some sort may be said of Venice, the government whereof is
usually mistaken; for Venice, though it does not take in the people,
never excluded them. This commonwealth, the orders whereof are the
most democratical or popular of all others, in regard of the exquisite
rotation of the Senate, at the first institution took in the whole
people; they that now live under the government without participation of
it, are such as have since either voluntarily chosen so to do, or
were subdued by arms. Wherefore the subject of Venice is governed by
provinces, and the balance of dominion not standing, as has been said,
with provincial government; as the Mamelukes durst not cast their
government upon this balance in their provinces, lest the national
interest should have rooted out the foreign, so neither dare the
Venetians take in their subjects upon this balance, lest the foreign
interest should root out the national (which is that of the 3,000
now governing), and by diffusing the commonwealth throughout her
territories, lose the advantage of her situation, by which in great
part it subsists. And such also is the government of the Spaniard in the
Indies, to which he deputes natives of his own country, not admitting
the creoles to the government of those provinces, though descended from
Spaniards.

But if a prince or a commonwealth may hold a territory that is foreign
in this, it may be asked why he may not hold one that is native in
the like manner? To which I answer, because he can hold a foreign by a
native territory, but not a native by a foreign; and as hitherto I
have shown what is not the provincial balance, so by this answer it may
appear what it is, namely, the overbalance of a native territory to
a foreign; for as one country balances itself by the distribution
of property according to the proportion of the same, so one country
overbalances another by advantage of divers kinds. For example, the
Commonwealth of Rome overbalanced her provinces by the vigor of a
more excellent government opposed to a crazier. Or by a more exquisite
militia opposed to one inferior in courage or discipline. The like was
that of the Mamelukes, being a hardy people, to the Egyptians, that were
a soft one. And the balance of situation is in this kind of wonderful
effect; seeing the King of Denmark, being none of the most potent
princes, is able at the Sound to take toll of the greatest; and as
this King, by the advantage of the land, can make the sea tributary, so
Venice, by the advantage of the sea, in whose arms she is impregnable,
can make the land to feed her gulf. For the colonies in the Indies,
they are yet babes that cannot live without sucking the breasts of their
mother cities, but such as I mistake if when they come of age they do
not wean themselves; which causes me to wonder at princes that delight
to be exhausted in that way. And so much for the principles of power,
whether national or provincial, domestic or foreign; being such as are
external, and founded in the goods of fortune.

I come to the principles of authority, which are internal, and founded
upon the goods of the mind. These the legislator that can unite in his
government with those of fortune, comes nearest to the work of God,
whose government consists of heaven and earth; which was said by Plato,
though in different words, as, when princes should be philosophers, or
philosophers princes, the world would be happy. And says Solomon: “There
is an evil which I have seen under the sun, which proceeds from the
ruler (enimvero neque nobilem, neque ingenuum, nec libertinum quidem
armis praeponere, regia utilitas est). Folly is set in great dignity,
and the rich (either in virtue and wisdom, in the goods of the mind,
or those of fortune upon that balance which gives them a sense of the
national interest) sit in low places. I have seen servants upon horses,
and princes walking as servants upon the earth.” Sad complaints, that
the principles of power and of authority, the goods of the mind and
of fortune, do not meet and twine in the wreath or crown of empire!
Wherefore, if we have anything of piety or of prudence, let us raise
ourselves out of the mire of private interest to the contemplation of
virtue, and put a hand to the removal of “this evil from under the sun;”
 this evil against which no government that is not secured can be good;
this evil from which the government that is secure must be perfect.
Solomon tells us that the cause of it is from the ruler, from those
principles of power, which, balanced upon earthly trash, exclude the
heavenly treasures of virtue, and that influence of it upon government
which is authority. We have wandered the earth to find out the balance
of power; but to find out that of authority we must ascend, as I said,
nearer heaven, or to the image of God, which is the soul of man.

The soul of man (whose life or motion is perpetual contemplation or
thought) is the mistress of two potent rivals, the one reason, the other
passion, that are in continual suit; and, according as she gives up her
will to these or either of them, is the felicity or misery which man
partakes in this mortal life.

For, as whatever was passion in the contemplation of a man, being
brought forth by his will into action, is vice and the bondage of sin;
so whatever was reason in the contemplation of a man, being brought
forth by his will into action, is virtue and the freedom of soul.

Again, as those actions of a man that were sin acquire to himself
repentance or shame, and affect others with scorn or pity, so those
actions of a man that are virtue acquire to himself honor, and upon
others authority.

Now government is no other than the soul of a nation or city: wherefore
that which was reason in the debate of a commonwealth being brought
forth by the result, must be virtue; and forasmuch as the soul of a
city or nation is the sovereign power, her virtue must be law. But the
government whose law is virtue, and whose virtue is law, is the same
whose empire is authority, and whose authority is empire.

Again, if the liberty of a man consists in the empire of his reason, the
absence whereof would betray him to the bondage of his passions, then
the liberty of a commonwealth consists in the empire of her laws, the
absence whereof would betray her to the lust of tyrants. And these I
conceive to be the principles upon which Aristotle and Livy (injuriously
accused by Leviathan for not writing out of nature) have grounded their
assertion, “that a commonwealth is an empire of laws and not of men.”
 But they must not carry it so. “For,” says he, “the liberty whereof
there is so frequent and honorable mention in the histories and
philosophy of the ancient Greeks and Romans, and the writings and
discourses of those that from them have received all their learning in
the politics, is not the liberty of particular men, but the liberty
of the commonwealth.” He might as well have said that the estates of
particular men in a commonwealth are not the riches of particular men,
but the riches of the commonwealth; for equality of estates causes
equality of power, and equality of power is the liberty, not only of the
commonwealth, but of every man.

But sure a man would never be thus irreverent with the greatest authors,
and positive against all antiquity without some certain demonstration of
truth--and what is it? Why, “there is written on the turrets of the city
of Lucca in great characters at this day the word LIBERTAS; yet no man
can thence infer that a particular man has more liberty or immunity from
the service of the commonwealth there than in Constantinople. Whether
a commonwealth be monarchical or popular the freedom is the same.” The
mountain has brought forth, and we have a little equivocation! For to
say that a Lucchese has no more liberty or immunity from the laws of
Lucca than a Turk has from those of Constantinople; and to say that a
Lucchese has no more liberty or immunity by the laws of Lucca, than a
Turk has by those of Constantinople, are pretty different speeches. The
first may be said of all governments alike; the second scarce of any
two; much less of these, seeing it is known that, whereas the greatest
Bashaw is a tenant, as well of his head as of his estate, at the will
of his lord, the meanest Lucchese that has land is a freeholder of
both, and not to be controlled but by the law, and that framed by every
private man to no other end (or they may thank themselves) than to
protect the liberty of every private man, which by that means comes to
be the liberty of the commonwealth.

But seeing they that make the laws in commonwealths are but men, the
main question seems to be, how a commonwealth comes to be an empire of
laws, and not of men? or how the debate or result of a commonwealth is
so sure to be according to reason; seeing they who debate, and they who
resolve, be but men? “And as often as reason is against a man, so often
will a man be against reason.”

This is thought to be a shrewd saying, but will do no harm; for be it so
that reason is nothing but interest, there be divers interests, and so
divers reasons.

As first, there is private reason, which is the interest of a private
man.

Secondly, there is reason of state, which is the interest (or error,
as was said by Solomon) of the ruler or rulers, that is to say, of the
prince, of the nobility, or of the people.

Thirdly there is that reason, which is the interest of mankind, or of
the whole. “Now if we see even in those natural agents that want sense,
that as in themselves they have a law which directs them in the means
whereby they tend to their own perfection, so likewise that another law
there is, which touches them as they are sociable parts united into one
body, a law which binds them each to serve to others’ good, and all to
prefer the good of the whole, before whatsoever their own particular; as
when stones, or heavy things, forsake their ordinary wont or centre,
and fly upward, as if they heard themselves commanded to let go the good
they privately wish, and to relieve the present distress of nature in
common.” There is a common right, law of nature, or interest of the
whole, which is more excellent, and so acknowledged to be by the agents
themselves, than the right or interest of the parts only. “Wherefore,
though it may be truly said that the creatures are naturally carried
forth to their proper utility or profit, that ought not to be taken
in too general a sense; seeing divers of them abstain from their own
profit, either in regard of those of the same kind, or at least of their
young.”

Mankind then must either be less just than the creature, or acknowledge
also his common interest to be common right. And if reason be nothing
else but interest, and the interest of mankind be the right interest,
then the reason of mankind must be right reason. Now compute well; for
if the interest of popular government come the nearest to the interest
of mankind, then the reason of popular government must come the nearest
to right reason.

But it may be said that the difficulty remains yet; for be the interest
of popular government right reason, a man does not look upon reason as
it is right or wrong in itself, but as it makes for him or against him.
Wherefore, unless you can show such orders of a government as, like
those of God in nature, shall be able to constrain this or that creature
to shake off that inclination which is more peculiar to it, and take up
that which regards the common good or interest, all this is to no more
end than to persuade every man in a popular government not to carve
himself of that which he desires most, but to be mannerly at the
public table, and give the best from himself to decency and the common
interest. But that such orders may be established as may, nay must, give
the upper hand in all cases to common right or interest, notwithstanding
the nearness of that which sticks to every man in private, and this in
a way of equal certainty and facility, is known even to girls, being no
other than those that are of common practice with them in divers cases.
For example, two of them have a cake yet undivided, which was given
between them: that each of them therefore might have that which is due,
“Divide,” says one to the other, “and I will choose; or let me divide,
and you shall choose.” If this be but once agreed upon, it is enough;
for the divident, dividing unequally, loses, in regard that the other
takes the better half. Wherefore she divides equally, and so both have
right. “Oh, the depth of the wisdom of God.” And yet “by the mouths of
babes and sucklings has He set forth His strength;” that which great
philosophers are disputing upon in vain is brought to light by two
harmless girls, even the whole mystery of a commonwealth, which lies
only in dividing and choosing. Nor has God (if his works in nature be
understood) left so much to mankind to dispute upon as who shall divide
and who choose, but distributed them forever into two orders, whereof
the one has the natural right of dividing, and the other of choosing.

For example: A commonwealth is but a civil society of men: let us take
any number of men (as twenty) and immediately make a commonwealth.
Twenty men (if they be not all idiots, perhaps if they be) can never
come so together but there will be such a difference in them that about
a third will be wiser, or at least less foolish than all the rest; these
upon acquaintance, though it be but small, will be discovered, and, as
stags that have the largest heads, lead the herd; for while the six,
discoursing and arguing one with another, show the eminence of their
parts, the fourteen discover things that they never thought on; or are
cleared in divers truths which had formerly perplexed them. Wherefore,
in matter of common concernment, difficulty, or danger, they hang upon
their lips, as children upon their fathers; and the influence thus
acquired by the six, the eminence of whose parts are found to be a stay
and comfort to the fourteen, is the authority of the fathers. Wherefore
this can be no other than a natural aristocracy diffused by God
throughout the whole body of mankind to this end and purpose; and
therefore such as the people have not only a natural but a positive
obligation to make use of as their guides; as where the people of Israel
are commanded to “take wise men, and understanding, and known among
their tribes, to be made rulers over them.” The six then approved of,
as in the present case, are the senate, not by hereditary right, or in
regard of the greatness of their estates only, which would tend to
such power as might force or draw the people, but by election for their
excellent parts, which tends to the advancement of the influence of
their virtue or authority that leads the people. Wherefore the office of
the senate is not to be commanders, but counsellors, of the people; and
that which is proper to counsellors is first to debate, and afterward
to give advice in the business whereupon they have debated, whence the
decrees of the senate are never laws, nor so called; and these being
maturely framed, it is their duty to propose in the case to the people.
Wherefore the senate is no more than the debate of the commonwealth. But
to debate is to discern or put a difference between things that, being
alike, are not the same; or it is separating and weighing this reason
against that, and that reason against this, which is dividing.

The senate then having divided, who shall choose? Ask the girls: for if
she that divided must have chosen also, it had been little worse for
the other in case she had not divided at all, but kept the whole cake to
herself, in regard that being to choose, too, she divided accordingly.
Wherefore if the senate have any further power than to divide, the
commonwealth can never be equal. But in a commonwealth consisting of
a single council, there is no other to choose than that which divided;
whence it is, that such a council fails not to scramble--that is, to
be factious, there being no other dividing of the cake in that case but
among themselves.

Nor is there any remedy but to have another council to choose. The
wisdom of the few may be the light of mankind; but the interest of
the few is not the profit of mankind nor of a commonwealth. Wherefore,
seeing we have granted interest to be reason, they must not choose lest
it put out their light. But as the council dividing consists of the
wisdom of the commonwealth, so the assembly or council choosing should
consist of the interest of the commonwealth: as the wisdom of the
commonwealth is in the aristocracy, so the interest of the commonwealth
is in the whole body of the people. And whereas this, in case the
commonwealth consist of a whole nation, is too unwieldy a body to be
assembled, this council is to consist of such a representative as may be
equal, and so constituted, as can never contract any other interest
than that of the whole people; the manner whereof, being such as is best
shown by exemplification, I remit to the model. But in the present case,
the six dividing, and the fourteen choosing, must of necessity take in
the whole interest of the twenty.

Dividing and choosing, in the language of a commonwealth, is debating
and resolving; and whatsoever, upon debate of the senate, is proposed
to the people, and resolved by them, is enacted by the authority of the
fathers, and by the power of the people, which concurring, make a law.

But the law being made, says Leviathan, “is but words and paper without
the hands and swords of men;” wherefore as these two orders of a
commonwealth, namely, the senate and the people, are legislative, so of
necessity there must be a third to be executive of the laws made, and
this is the magistracy. In which order, with the rest being wrought up
by art, the commonwealth consists of “the senate proposing, the people
resolving, and the magistracy executing,” whereby partaking of the
aristocracy as in the senate, of the democracy as in the people, and of
monarchy as in the magistracy, it is complete. Now there being no other
commonwealth but this in art or nature, it is no wonder if Machiavel
has shown us that the ancients held this only to be good; but it seems
strange to me that they should hold that there could be any other, for
if there be such a thing as pure monarchy, yet that there should be such
a one as pure aristocracy or pure democracy is not in my understanding.
But the magistracy, both in number and function, is different in
different commonwealths. Nevertheless there is one condition of it that
must be the same in every one, or it dissolves the commonwealth where it
is wanting. And this is no less than that, as the hand of the magistrate
is the executive power of the law, so the head of the magistrate is
answerable to the people, that his execution be according to the law; by
which Leviathan may see that the hand or sword that executes the law is
in it and not above it.

Now whether I have rightly transcribed these principles of a
commonwealth out of nature, I shall appeal to God and to the world--to
God in the fabric of the Commonwealth of Israel, and to the world in
the universal series of ancient prudence. But in regard the same
commonwealths will be opened at large in the Council of legislators, I
shall touch them for the present but slightly, beginning with that of
Israel.

The Commonwealth of Israel consisted of the Senate, the people, and the
magistracy.

The people by their first division, which was genealogical, were
contained under their thirteen tribes, houses, or families; whereof the
first-born in each was prince of his tribe, and had the leading of it:
the tribe of Levi only, being set apart to serve at the altar, had no
other prince but the high-priest. In their second division they were
divided locally by their agrarian, or the distribution of the land
of Canaan to them by lot, the tithe of all remaining to Levi; whence,
according to their local division, the tribes are reckoned but twelve.

The assemblies of the people thus divided were methodically gathered by
trumpets to the congregation: which was, it should seem, of two sorts.
For if it were called with one trumpet only, the princes of the tribes
and the elders only assembled; but if it were called with two, the whole
people gathered themselves to the congregation, for so it is rendered
by the English; but in the Greek it is called Ecclesia, or the Church of
God, and by the Talmudist the great “Synagogue.” The word Ecclesia
was also anciently and properly used for the civil congregations, or
assemblies of the people in Athens, Lacedaemon, and Ephesus, where it
is so called in Scripture, though it be otherwise rendered by the
translators, not much as I conceive to their commendation, seeing by
that means they have lost us a good lesson, the apostles borrowing that
name for their spiritual congregations, to the end that we might
see they intended the government of the church to be democratical or
popular, as is also plain in the rest of their constitutions.

The church or congregation of the people of Israel assembled in a
military manner, and had the result of the commonwealth, or the power of
confirming all their laws, though proposed even by God himself; as
where they make him king, and where they reject or depose him as civil
magistrate, and elect Saul. It is manifest that he gives no such example
to a legislator in a popular government as to deny or evade the power of
the people, which were a contradiction; but though he deservedly blames
the ingratitude of the people in that action, he commands Samuel, being
next under himself supreme magistrate, “to hearken to their voice”
 (for where the suffrage of the people goes for nothing, it is no
commonwealth), and comforts him, saying, “They have not rejected thee,
but they have rejected me that I should not reign over them.” But to
reject him that he should not reign over them, was as civil magistrate
to depose him. The power therefore which the people had to depose even
God himself as he was civil magistrate, leaves little doubt but that
they had power to have rejected any of those laws confirmed by them
throughout the Scripture, which, to omit the several parcels, are
generally contained under two heads: those that were made by covenant
with the people in the land of Moab, and those which were made by
covenant with the people in Horeb; which two, I think, amount to the
whole body of the Israelitish laws.

But if all and every one of the laws of Israel being proposed by God,
were no otherwise enacted than by covenant with the people, then that
only which was resolved by the people of Israel was their law; and so
the result of that commonwealth was in the people. Nor had the people
the result only in matter of law, but the power in some cases of
judicature; as also the right of levying war, cognizance in matter
of religion, and the election of their magistrates, as the judge or
dictator, the king, the prince: which functions were exercised by the
Synagoga magna, or Congregation of Israel, not always in one manner, for
sometimes they were performed by the suffrage of the people, viva voce,
sometimes by the lot only, and at others by the ballot, or by a mixture
of the lot with the suffrage, as in the case of Eldad and Medad, which I
shall open with the Senate.

The Senate of Israel, called in the old Testament the Seventy Elders,
and in the New the Sanhedrim (which word is usually translated “the
Council”), was appointed by God, and consisted of seventy elders besides
Moses, which were at first elected by the people, but in what manner is
rather intimated than shown. Nevertheless, because I cannot otherwise
understand the passage concerning Eldad and Medad, of whom it is said
“that they were of them that were written, but went not up to the
tabernacle,” then with the Talmudists I conceive that Eldad and Medad
had the suffrage of the tribes, and so were written as competitors for
magistracy; but coming afterward to the lot, failed of it, and therefore
went not up to the tabernacle, or place of confirmation by God, or to
the session-house of the Senate, with the Seventy upon whom the lot fell
to be senators; for the session-house of the Sanhedrim was first in the
court of the tabernacle, and afterward in that of the Temple, where it
came to be called the stone chamber or pavement. If this were the ballot
of Israel, that of Venice is the same transposed; for in Venice the
competitor is chosen as it were by the lot, in regard that the electors
are so made, and the magistrate is chosen by the “suffrage of the great
Council or assembly of the people.” But the Sanhedrim of Israel being
thus constituted, Moses, for his time, and after him his successor sat
in the midst of it as prince or archon, and at his left hand the orator
or father of the Senate; the rest, or the bench, coming round with
either horn like a crescent, had a scribe attending upon the tip of it.

This Senate, in regard the legislator of Israel was infallible, and the
laws given by God such as were not fit to be altered by men, is much
different in the exercise of their power from all other senates, except
that of the Areopagus in Athens, which also was little more than a
supreme judicatory, for it will hardly, as I conceive, be found that
the Sanhedrim proposed to the people till the return of the children of
Israel out of captivity under Esdras, at which time there was a new law
made--namely, for a kind of excommunication, or rather banishment, which
had never been before in Israel. Nevertheless it is not to be thought
that the Sanhedrim had not always that right, which from the time of
Esdras is more frequently exercised, of proposing to the people, but
that they forebore it in regard of the fulness and infallibility of the
law already made, whereby it was needless. Wherefore the function
of this Council, which is very rare in a senate, was executive, and
consisted in the administration of the law made; and whereas the Council
itself is often understood in Scripture by the priest and the Levite,
there is no more in that save only that the priests and the Levites,
who otherwise had no power at all, being in the younger years of this
commonwealth, those that were best studied in the laws were the most
frequently elected into the Sanhedrim. For the courts, consisting of
three-and-twenty elders sitting in the gates of every city, and the
triumvirates of judges constituted almost in every village, which were
parts of the executive magistracy subordinate to the Sanhedrim, I shall
take them at better leisure, and in the larger discourse; but these
being that part of this commonwealth which was instituted by Moses upon
the advice of Jethro the priest of Midian (as I conceive a heathen), are
to me a sufficient warrant even from God himself, who confirmed them,
to make further use of human prudence, wherever I find it bearing a
testimony to itself, whether in heathen commonwealths or others; and the
rather, because so it is, that we who have the holy Scriptures, and in
them the original of a commonwealth, made by the same hand that made
the world, are either altogether blind or negligent of it; while the
heathens have all written theirs, as if they had had no other copy; as,
to be more brief in the present account of that which you shall have
more at large hereafter:

Athens consisted of the Senate of the Bean proposing, of the Church or
Assembly of the people resolving, and too often debating, which was the
ruin of it; as also of the Senate of the Areopagus, the nine archons,
with divers other magistrates, executing.

Lacedaemon consisted of the Senate proposing, of the Church or
congregation of the people resolving only, and never debating, which was
the long life of it; and of the two kings, the court of the ephors, with
divers other magistrates, executing.

Carthage consisted of the Senate proposing and sometimes resolving too,
of the people resolving and sometimes debating too, for which fault she
was reprehended by Aristotle; and she had her suffetes, and her hundred
men, with other magistrates, executing.

Rome consisted of the Senate proposing, the concio or people resolving,
and too often debating, which caused her storms; as also of the consuls,
censors, aediles, tribunes, praetors, quaestors, and other magistrates,
executing.

Venice consists of the Senate, or pregati, proposing, and sometimes
resolving too, of the great Council or Assembly of the people, in whom
the result is constitutively; as also of the doge, the signory, the
censors, the dieci, the quazancies, and other magistrates, executing.

The proceeding of the Commonwealths of Switzerland and Holland is of a
like nature, though after a more obscure manner; for the sovereignties,
whether cantons, provinces, or cities, which are the people, send
their deputies, commissioned and instructed by themselves (wherein they
reserve the result in their own power), to the provincial or general
convention, or Senate, where the deputies debate, but have no other
power of result than what was conferred upon them by the people, or
is further conferred by the same upon further occasion. And for
the executive part they have magistrates or judges in every canton,
province, or city, besides those which are more public, and relate to
the league, as for adjusting controversies between one canton, province,
or city and another, or the like between such persons as are not of the
same canton, province, or city.

But that we may observe a little further how the heathen politicians
have written, not only out of nature, but as it were out of Scripture:
as in the Commonwealth of Israel, God is said to have been king, so
the commonwealth where the law is king, is said by Aristotle to be “the
kingdom of God.” And where by the lusts or passions of men a power is
set above that of the law deriving from reason, which is the dictate of
God, God in that sense is rejected or deposed that he should not reign
over them, as he was in Israel. And yet Leviathan will have it that “by
reading of these Greek and Latin [he might as well in this sense have
said Hebrew] authors, young men, and all others that are unprovided
of the antidote of solid reason, receiving a strong and delightful
impression of the great exploits of war achieved by the conductors
of their armies, receive withal a pleasing idea of all they have done
besides, and imagine their great prosperity not to have proceeded from
the emulation of particular men, but from the virtue of their popular
form of government, not considering the frequent seditions and civil
wars produced by the imperfection of their polity.” Where, first,
the blame he lays to the heathen authors, is in his sense laid to the
Scripture; and whereas he holds them to be young men, or men of no
antidote that are of like opinions, it should seem that Machiavel,
the sole retriever of this ancient prudence, is to his solid reason a
beardless boy that has newly read Livy. And how solid his reason is, may
appear where he grants the great prosperity of ancient commonwealths,
which is to give up the controversy. For such an effect must have some
adequate cause, which to evade he insinuates that it was nothing else
but the emulation of particular men, as if so great an emulation could
have been generated without as great virtue, so great virtue without
the best education, and best education without the best law, or the best
laws any otherwise than by the excellency of their polity.

But if some of these commonwealths, as being less perfect in their
polity than others, have been more seditious, it is not more an argument
of the infirmity of this or that commonwealth in particular, than of the
excellency of that kind of polity in general, which if they, that have
not altogether reached, have nevertheless had greater prosperity, what
would befall them that should reach?

In answer to which question let me invite Leviathan, who of all other
governments gives the advantage to monarchy for perfection, to a better
disquisition of it by these three assertions.

The first, that the perfection of government lies upon such a libration
in the frame of it, that no man or men in or under it can have the
interest, or, having the interest, can have the power to disturb it with
sedition.

The second, that monarchy, reaching the perfection of the kind, reaches
not to the perfection of government, but must have some dangerous flaw
in it.

The third, that popular government, reaching the perfection of the kind,
reaches the perfection of government, and has no flaw in it.

The first assertion requires no proof.

For the proof of the second, monarchy, as has been shown, is of two
kinds: the one by arms, the other by a nobility and there is no
other kind in art or nature; for if there have ‘been anciently some
governments called kingdoms, as one of the Goths in Spain, and another
of the Vandals in Africa, where the King ruled without a nobility and
by a council of the people only it is expressly said by the authors that
mention them that the, kings were but the captains, and that the people
not only gave them laws, but deposed them as often as they pleased.
Nor is it possible in reason that it should be otherwise in like cases;
wherefore these were either no monarchies, or had greater flaws in them
than any other.

But for a monarchy by arms, as that of the Turk (which, of all models
that ever were, comes up to the perfection of the kind), it is not in
the wit or power of man to cure it of this dangerous flaw, that the
Janizaries have frequent interest and perpetual power to raise sedition,
and to tear the magistrate, even the prince himself, in pieces.
Therefore the monarchy of Turkey is no perfect government.

And for a monarchy by nobility, as of late in Oceana (which of all other
models, before the declination of it, came up to the perfection in
that kind), it was not in the power or wit of man to cure it of that
dangerous flaw; that the nobility had frequent interest and perpetual
power by their retainers and tenants to raise sedition; and (whereas the
Janizaries occasion this kind of calamity no sooner than they make an
end of it) to levy a lasting war, to the vast effusion of blood, and
that even upon occasions wherein the people, but for their dependence
upon their lords, had no concernment, as in the feud of the Red and
White. The like has been frequent in Spain, France, Germany, and other
monarchies of this kind; wherefore monarchy by a nobility is no perfect
government.

For the proof of the third assertion: Leviathan yields it to me, that
there is no other commonwealth but monarchical or popular; wherefore
if no monarchy be a perfect government, then either there is no perfect
government, or it must be popular, for which kind of constitution I have
something more to say than Leviathan has said or ever will be able to
say for monarchy. As,

First, that it is the government that was never conquered by any
monarch, from the beginning of the world to this day, for if the
commonwealths of Greece came under the yoke of the Kings of Macedon,
they were first broken by themselves.

Secondly, that it is the government that has frequently led mighty
monarchs in triumph.

Thirdly, that it is the government, which, if it has been seditious, it
has not been so from any imperfection in the kind, but in the particular
constitution; which, wherever the like has happened, must have been
unequal.

Fourthly, that it is the government, which, if it has been anything
near equal, was never seditious; or let him show me what sedition has
happened in Lacedaemon or Venice.

Fifthly, that it is the government, which, attaining to perfect
equality, has such a libration in the frame of it, that no man living
can show which way any man or men, in or under it, can contract any such
interest or power as should be able to disturb the commonwealth with
sedition, wherefore an equal commonwealth is that only which is without
flaw and contains in it the full perfection of government. But to
return.

By what has been shown in reason and experience, it may appear, that
though commonwealths in general be governments of the senate proposing,
the people resolving, and the magistracy executing, yet some are not so
good at these orders as others, through some impediment or defect in
the frame, balance, or capacity of them, according to which they are of
divers kinds.

The first division of them is into such as are single, as Israel,
Athens, Lacedaemon, etc.; and such as are by leagues, as those of the
Achaeans, AEtolians, Lycians, Switz, and Hollanders.

The second (being Machiavel’s) is into such as are for preservation, as
Lacedaemon and Venice, and such as are for increase, as Athens and
Rome; in which I can see no more than that the former takes in no more
citizens than are necessary for defence, and the latter so many as are
capable of increase.

The third division (unseen hitherto) is into equal and Unequal, and this
is the main point, especially as to domestic peace and tranquillity; for
to make a commonwealth unequal, is to divide it into parties, which sets
them at perpetual variance, the one party endeavoring to preserve their
eminence and inequality and the other to attain to equality; whence
the people of Rome derived their perpetual strife with the nobility and
Senate. But in an equal commonwealth there can be no more strife than
there can be overbalance in equal weights; wherefore the Commonwealth
of Venice, being that which of all others is the most equal in the
constitution, is that wherein there never happened any strife between
the Senate and the people.

An equal commonwealth is such a one as is equal both in the balance or
foundation, and in the superstructure; that is to say, in her agrarian
law and in her rotation.

An equal agrarian is a perpetual law, establishing and preserving the
balance of dominion by such a distribution, that no one man or number of
men, within the compass of the few or aristocracy, can come to overpower
the whole people by their possessions in lands.

As the agrarian answers to the foundation, so does rotation to the
superstructures.

Equal rotation is equal vicissitude in government, or succession
to magistracy conferred for such convenient terms, enjoying equal
vacations, as take in the whole body by parts, succeeding others,
through the free election or suffrage of the people.

The contrary, whereunto is prolongation of magistracy, which, trashing
the wheel of rotation, destroys the life or natural motion of a
commonwealth.

The election or suffrage of the people is most free, where it is made or
given in such a manner that it can neither oblige nor disoblige another,
nor through fear of an enemy, or bashfulness toward a friend, impair a
man’s liberty.

Wherefore, says Cicero, the tablet or ballot of the people of Rome (who
gave their votes by throwing tablets or little pieces of wood secretly
into urns marked for the negative or affirmative) was a welcome
constitution to the people, as that which, not impairing the assurance
of their brows, increased the freedom of their judgment. I have not
stood upon a more particular description of this ballot, because that of
Venice exemplified in the model is of all others the most perfect.

An equal commonwealth (by that which has been said) is a government
established upon an equal agrarian, arising into the superstructures or
three orders, the Senate debating and proposing, the people resolving,
and the magistracy executing, by an equal rotation through the suffrage
of the people given by the ballot. For though rotation may be without
the ballot, and the ballot without rotation, yet the ballot not only as
to the ensuing model includes both, but is by far the most equal
way; for which cause under the name of the ballot I shall hereafter
understand both that and rotation too.

Now having reasoned the principles of an equal commonwealth, I should
come to give an instance of such a one in experience, if I could find
it; but if this work be of any value, it lies in that it is the first
example of a commonwealth that is perfectly equal. For Venice, though
it comes the nearest, yet is a commonwealth for preservation; and such
a one, considering the paucity of citizens taken in, and the number
not taken in, is externally unequal; and though every commonwealth that
holds provinces must in that regard be such, yet not to that degree.
Nevertheless, Venice internally, and for her capacity, is by far the
most equal, though it has not, in my judgment, arrived at the full
perfection of equality; both because her laws supplying the defect of
an agrarian are not so clear nor effectual at the foundation, nor
her superstructures, by the virtue of her ballot or rotation, exactly
librated; in regard that through the paucity of her citizens her
greater magistracies are continually wheeled through a few hands, as is
confessed by Janotti, where he says, that if a gentleman comes once
to be Savio di terra ferma, it seldom happens that he fails from
thenceforward to be adorned with some one of the greater magistracies,
as Savi di mare, Savi di terra ferma, Savi Grandi, counsellors, those
of the decemvirate or dictatorian council, the aurogatori, or censors,
which require no vacation or interval. Wherefore if this in Venice, or
that in Lacedaemon, where the kings were hereditary, and the Senators
(though elected by the people) for life, cause no inequality (which is
hard to be conceived) in a commonwealth for preservation, or such a one
as consists of a few citizens; yet is it manifest that it would cause
a very great one in a commonwealth for increase, or consisting of the
many, which, by engrossing the magistracies in a few hands, would be
obstructed in their rotation.

But there be who say (and think it a strong objection) that, let a
commonwealth be as equal as you can imagine, two or three men when all
is done will govern it; and there is that in it which, notwithstanding
the pretended sufficiency of a popular State, amounts to a plain
confession of the imbecility of that policy, and of the prerogative of
monarchy; forasmuch as popular governments in difficult cases have had
recourse to dictatorian power, as in Rome.

To which I answer, that as truth is a spark to which objections are like
bellows, so in this respect our commonwealth shines; for the eminence
acquired by suffrage of the people in a commonwealth, especially if
it be popular and equal, can be ascended by no other steps than the
universal acknowledgment of virtue: and where men excel in virtue, the
commonwealth is stupid and unjust, if accordingly they do not excel in
authority. Wherefore this is both the advantage of virtue, which has her
due encouragement, and of the commonwealth, which has her due services.
These are the philosophers which Plato would have to be princes, the
princes which Solomon would have to be mounted, and their steeds are
those of authority, not empire; or, if they be buckled to the chariot of
empire, as that of the dictatorian power, like the chariot of the
sun, it is glorious for terms and vacations or intervals. And as a
commonwealth is a government of laws and not of men, so is this the
principality of virtue, and not of man; if that fail or set in one, it
rises in another who is created his immediate successor. And this takes
away that vanity from under the sun, which is an error proceeding more
or less from all other rulers under heaven but an equal commonwealth.

These things considered, it will be convenient in this place to speak a
word to such as go about to insinuate to the nobility or gentry a fear
of the people, or to the people a fear of the nobility or gentry; as if
their interests were destructive to each other. When indeed an army may
as well consist of soldiers without officers, or of officers without
soldiers, as a commonwealth, especially such a one as is capable of
greatness, of a people without a gentry, or of a gentry without a
people. Wherefore this, though not always so intended, as may appear
by Machiavel, who else would be guilty, is a pernicious error. There is
something first in the making of a commonwealth, then in the governing
of it, and last of all in the leading of its armies, which, though there
be great divines, great lawyers, great men in all professions, seems to
be peculiar only to the genius of a gentleman.

For so it is in the universal series of story, that if any man has
founded a commonwealth, he was first a gentleman. Moses had his
education by the daughter of Pharaoh; Theseus and Solon, of noble birth,
were held by the Athenians worthy to be kings; Lycurgus was of the royal
blood; Romulus and Numa princes; Brutus and Publicola patricians;
the Gracchi, that lost their lives for the people of Rome and the
restitution of that commonwealth, were the sons of a father adored with
two triumphs, and of Cornelia the daughter of Scipio, who being demanded
in marriage by King Ptolemy, disdained to become the Queen of Egypt. And
the most renowned Olphaus Megaletor, sole legislator, as you will see
anon, of the Commonwealth of Oceana, was derived from a noble family;
nor will it be any occasion of scruple in this case, that Leviathan
affirms the politics to be no ancienter than his book “De Cive.” Such
also as have got any fame in the civil government of a commonwealth, or
by the leading of its armies, have been gentlemen; for so in all other
respects were those plebeian magistrates elected by the people of Rome,
being of known descents and of equal virtues, except only that they were
excluded from the name by the usurpation of the patricians. Holland,
through this defect at home, has borrowed princes for generals, and
gentlemen of divers nations for commanders: and the Switzers, if they
have any defect in this kind, rather lend their people to the colors
of other princes, than make that noble use of them at home which should
assert the liberty of mankind. For where there is not a nobility to
hearten the people, they are slothful, regardless of the world, and of
the public interest of liberty, as even those of Rome had been without
their gentry: wherefore let the people embrace the gentry in peace, as
the light of their eyes; and in war, as the trophy of their arms; and if
Cornelia disdained to be Queen of Egypt, if a Roman consul looked down
from his tribunal upon the greatest king, let the nobility love and
cherish the people that afford them a throne so much higher in a
commonwealth, in the acknowledgment of their virtue, than the crowns of
monarchs.

But if the equality of a commonwealth consist in the equality first
of the agrarian, and next of the rotation, then the inequality of a
commonwealth must consist in the absence or inequality of the agrarian,
or of the rotation, or of both.

Israel and Lacedaemon, which commonwealths (as the people of this, in
Josephus, claims kindred of that) have great resemblance, were each of
them equal in their agrarian, and unequal in their rotation, especially
Israel, where the Sanhedrim, or Senate, first elected by the people, as
appears by the words of Moses, took upon them ever after, without any
precept of God, to substitute their successors by ordination; which
having been there of civil use, as excommunication, community of goods,
and other customs of the Essenes, who were many of them converted, came
afterward to be introduced into the Christian Church. And the election
of the judge, suffes, or dictator, was irregular, both for the occasion,
the term, and the vacation of that magistracy. As you find in the book
of Judges, where it is often repeated, that in those days there was no
king in Israel--that is, no judge; and in the first of Samuel, where Eli
judged Israel forty years, and Samuel, all his life. In Lacedaemon the
election of the Senate being by suffrage of the people, though for life,
was not altogether so unequal, yet the hereditary right of kings, were
it not for the agrarian, had ruined her.

Athens and Rome were unequal as to their agrarian, that of Athens being
infirm, and this of Rome none at all; for if it were more anciently
carried it was never observed. Whence, by the time of Tiberius Gracchus,
the nobility had almost eaten the people quite out of their lands,
which they held in the occupation of tenants and servants, whereupon the
remedy being too late, and too vehemently applied, that commonwealth was
ruined.

These also were unequal in their rotation, but in a contrary manner.
Athens, in regard that the Senate (chosen at once by lot, not by
suffrage, and changed every year, not in part, but in the whole)
consisted not of the natural aristocracy, nor sitting long enough to
understand or to be perfect in their office, had no sufficient authority
to restrain the people from that perpetual turbulence in the end, which
was their ruin, notwithstanding the efforts of Nicias, who did all a man
could do to help it. But as Athens, by the headiness of the people, so
Rome fell by the ambition of the nobility, through the want of an equal
rotation; which, if the people had got into the Senate, and timely
into the magistracies (whereof the former was always usurped by the
patricians, and the latter for the most part) they had both carried and
held their agrarian, and that had rendered that commonwealth immovable.

But let a commonwealth be equal or unequal, it must consist, as has been
shown by reason and all experience, of the three general orders; that is
to say, of the Senate debating and proposing, of the people resolving,
and of the magistracy executing. Wherefore I can never wonder enough
at Leviathan, who, without any reason or example, will have it that a
commonwealth consists of a single person, or of a single assembly; nor
can I sufficiently pity those “thousand gentlemen, whose minds, which
otherwise would have wavered, he has framed (as is affirmed by himself)
in to a conscientious obedience (for so he is pleased to call it) of
such a government.”

But to finish this part of the discourse, which I intend for as
complete an epitome of ancient prudence, and in that of the whole art of
politics, as I am able to frame in so short a time:

The two first orders, that is to say, the Senate and the people, are
legislative, whereunto answers that part of this science which by
politicians is entitled “of laws;” and the third order is executive,
to which answers that part of the same science which is styled “of the
frame and course of courts or judicatories.” A word to each of these
will be necessary.

And first for laws: they are either ecclesiastical or civil, such as
concern religion or government.

Laws, ecclesiastical, or such as concern religion, according to
the universal course of ancient prudence, are in the power of the
magistrate; but, according to the common practice of modern prudence,
since the papacy, torn out of his hands.

But, as a government pretending to liberty, and yet suppressing
liberty of conscience (which, because religion not according to a
man’s conscience can to him be none at all, is the main) must be a
contradiction, so a man that, pleading for the liberty of private
conscience, refuses liberty to the national conscience, must be absurd.

A commonwealth is nothing else but the national conscience. And if the
conviction of a man’s private conscience produces his private religion,
the conviction of the national conscience must produce a national
religion. Whether this be well reasoned, as also whether these two
may stand together, will best be shown by the examples of the ancient
commonwealths taken in their order.

In that of Israel the government of the national religion appertained
not to the priests and Levites, otherwise than as they happened to be
of the Sanhedrim, or Senate, to which they had no right at all but
by election. It is in this capacity therefore that the people are
commanded, under pain of death, “to hearken to them, and to do according
to the sentence of the law which they should teach;” but in Israel the
law ecclesiastical and civil was the same, therefore the Sanhedrim,
having the power of one, had the power of both. But as the national
religion appertained to the jurisdiction of the Sanhedrim, so the
liberty of conscience appertained, from the same date, and by the same
right, to the prophets and their disciples; as where it is said, “I will
raise up a prophet; and whoever will not hearken to my words which he
shall speak in my name, I will require it of him.” The words relate to
prophetic right, which was above all the orders of this commonwealth;
whence Elijah not only refused to obey the King, but destroyed his
messengers with fire. And whereas it was not lawful by the national
religion to sacrifice in any other place than the Temple, a prophet was
his own temple, and might sacrifice where he would, as Elijah did in
Mount Carmel. By this right John the Baptist and our Saviour, to whom it
more particularly related, had their disciples, and taught the people,
whence is derived our present right of gathered congregations;
wherefore the Christian religion grew up according to the orders of
the Commonwealth of Israel, and not against them. Nor was liberty of
conscience infringed by this government, till the civil liberty of
the same was lost, as under Herod, Pilate, and Tiberius, a three-piled
tyranny.

To proceed, Athens preserved her religion, by the testimony of Paul,
with great superstition: if Alcibiades, that atheistical fellow had not
showed them a pair of heels, they had shaven off his head for shaving
their Mercuries, and making their gods look ridiculously upon them
without beards. Nevertheless, if Paul reasoned with them, they loved
news, for which he was the more welcome; and if he converted Dionysius
the Areopagite, that is, one of the senators, there followed neither any
hurt to him, nor loss of honor to Dionysius. And for Rome, if Cicero,
in his most excellent book “De Natura Deorum,” overthrew the national
religion of that commonwealth, he was never the further from being
consul. But there is a meanness and poorness in modern prudence, not
only to the damage of civil government, but of religion itself; for
to make a man in matter of religion, which admits not of sensible
demonstration (jurare in verba magistri), engage to believe no otherwise
than is believed by my lord bishop, or Goodman Presbyter is a pedantism
that has made the sword to be a rod in the hands of schoolmasters; by
which means, whereas the Christian religion is the furthest of any
from countenancing war, there never was a war of religion but since
Christianity, for which we are beholden to the Pope; for the Pope not
giving liberty of conscience to princes and commonwealths, they cannot
give that to their subjects which they have not themselves, whence
both princes and subjects, either through his instigation or their own
disputes, have introduced that execrable custom, never known in the
world before, of fighting for religion, and denying the magistrate to
have any jurisdiction concerning it, whereas the magistrate’s losing the
power of religion loses the liberty of conscience, which in that case
has nothing to protect it. But if the people be otherwise taught,
it concerns them to look about them, and to distinguish between the
shrieking of the lapwing and the voice of the turtle.

To come to civil laws. If they stand one way and the balance another,
it is the case of a government which of necessity must be new modelled;
wherefore your lawyers, advising you upon the like occasions to fit your
government to their laws, are no more to be regarded than your tailor
if he should desire you to fit your body to his doublet. There is
also danger in the plausible pretence of reforming the law, except the
government be first good, in which case it is a good tree, and (trouble
not yourselves overmuch) brings not forth evil fruit; otherwise, if
the tree be evil, you can never reform the fruit, or if a root that is
naught bring forth fruit of this kind that seems to be good, take the
more heed, for it is the ranker poison. It was nowise probable, if
Augustus had not made excellent laws, that the bowels of Rome could have
come to be so miserably eaten out by the tyranny of Tiberius and his
successors. The best rule as to your laws in general is that they be
few. Rome, by the testimony of Cicero, Was best governed under those of
the twelve tables; and by that of Tacitus, Plurimoe leges, corruptissima
respublica. You will be told that where the laws be few they leave much
to arbitrary power; but where they be many, they leave more, the laws
in this case, according to Justinian and the best lawyers, being as
litigious as the suitors. Solon made few, Lycurgus fewer, laws; and
commonwealths have the fewest at this day of all other governments.

Now to conclude this part with a word de judiciis, or of the
constitution or course of courts; it is a discourse not otherwise
capable of being well managed but by particular examples, both the
constitution and course of courts being divers in different governments,
but best beyond compare in Venice, where they regard not so much the
arbitrary power of their courts as the constitution of them, whereby
that arbitrary power being altogether unable to retard or do hurt to
business, produces and must produce the quickest despatch, and the most
righteous dictates of justice that are perhaps in human nature. The
manner I shall not stand in this place to describe, because it is
exemplified at large in the judicature of the people of Oceana. And
thus much of ancient prudence, and the first branch of this preliminary
discourse.

THE SECOND PART OF THE PRELIMINARIES

In the second part I shall endeavor to show the rise, progress, and
declination of modern prudence.

The date of this kind of policy is to be computed, as was shown, from
those inundations of Goths, Vandals, Huns, and Lombards that overwhelmed
the Roman Empire. But as there is no appearance in the bulk or
constitution of modern prudence, that it should ever have been able to
come up and grapple with the ancient, so something of necessity must
have interposed whereby this came to be enervated, and that to receive
strength and encouragement. And this was the execrable reign of the
Roman emperors taking rise from (that felix scelus) the arms of
Caesar, in which storm the ship of the Roman Commonwealth was forced
to disburden itself of that precious freight, which never since could
emerge or raise its head but in the Gulf of Venice.

It is said in Scripture, “Thy evil is of thyself, O Israel!” to which
answers that of the moralists, “None is hurt but by himself,” as also
the whole matter of the politics; at present this example of the Romans,
who, through a negligence committed in their agrarian laws, let in the
sink of luxury, and forfeited the inestimable treasure of liberty for
themselves and their posterity.

Their agrarian laws were such whereby their lands ought to have been
divided among the people, either without mention of a colony, in which
case they were not obliged to change their abode; or with mention and
upon condition of a colony, in which case they were to change their
abode, and leaving the city, to plant themselves upon the lands so
assigned. The lands assigned, or that ought to have been assigned, in
either of these ways, were of three kinds: such as were taken from the
enemy and distributed to the people; or such as were taken from the
enemy, and, under color of being reserved to the public use, were
through stealth possessed by the nobility; or such as were bought with
the public money to be distributed. Of the laws offered in these cases,
those which divided the lands taken from the enemy, or purchased with
the public money, never occasioned any dispute; but such as drove at
dispossessing the nobility of their usurpations, and dividing the common
purchase of the sword among the people, were never touched but they
caused earthquakes, nor could they ever be obtained by the people; or
being obtained, be observed by the nobility, who not only preserved
their prey, but growing vastly rich upon it, bought the people by
degrees quite out of those shares that had been conferred upon them.
This the Gracchi coming too late to perceive found the balance of the
commonwealth to be lost; but putting the people (when they had least
force) by forcible means upon the recovery of it, did ill, seeing
it neither could nor did tend to any more than to show them by worse
effects that what the wisdom of their leaders had discovered was true.
For quite contrary to what has happened in Oceana, where, the balance
falling to the people, they have overthrown the nobility, that nobility
of Rome, under the conduct of Sylla, overthrew the people and the
commonwealth; seeing Sylla first introduced that new balance which was
the foundation of the succeeding monarchy, in the plantation of military
colonies, instituted by his distribution of the conquered lands, not now
of enemies, but of citizens, to forty-seven legions of his soldiers;
so that how he came to be perpetual dictator, or other magistrates to
succeed him in like power, is no miracle.

These military colonies (in which manner succeeding emperors continued,
as Augustus by the distribution of the veterans, whereby he had overcome
Brutus and Cassius to plant their soldiery) consisted of such as I
conceive were they that are called milites beneficiarii; in regard that
the tenure of their lands was by way of benefices, that is, for life,
and upon condition of duty or service in the war upon their own
charge. These benefices Alexander Severus granted to the heirs of the
incumbents, but upon the same conditions. And such was the dominion by
which the Roman emperors gave their balance. But to the beneficiaries,
as was no less than necessary for the safety of the prince, a matter of
8,000 by the example of Augustus were added, which departed not from
his sides, but were his perpetual guard, called Pretorian bands; though
these, according to the incurable flaw already observed in this kind of
government, became the most frequent butchers of their lords that are
to be found in story. Thus far the Roman monarchy is much the same with
that at this day in Turkey, consisting of a camp and a horse-quarter; a
camp in regard of the Spahis and Janizaries, the perpetual guard of the
prince, except they also chance to be liquorish after his blood; and a
horse-quarter in regard of the distribution of his whole land to tenants
for life, upon condition of continual service, or as often as they shall
be commanded at their own charge by timars, being a word which they
say signifies benefices, that it shall save me a labor of opening the
government.

But the fame of Mahomet and his prudence is especially founded in this,
that whereas the Roman monarchy, except that of Israel, was the most
imperfect, the Turkish is the most perfect that ever was. Which
happened in that the Roman (as the Israelitish of the Sanhedrim and
the congregation) had a mixture of the Senate and the people; and the
Turkish is pure. And that this was pure, and the other mixed, happened
not through the wisdom of the legislators, but the different genius of
the nations; the people of the Eastern parts, except the Israelites,
which is to be attributed to their agrarian, having been such as scarce
ever knew any other condition than that of slavery; and these of the
Wester having ever had such a relish of liberty, as through what despair
soever could never be brought to stand still while the yoke was putting
on their necks, but by being fed with some hopes of reserving to
themselves some part of their freedom.

Wherefore Julius Caesar (saith Suetonius) contented himself in naming
half the magistrates, to leave the rest to the suffrage of the people.
And Maecenas, though he would not have Augustus to give the people their
liberty, would not have him take it quite away. Whence this empire,
being neither hawk nor buzzard, made a flight accordingly; and the
prince being perpetually tossed (having the avarice of the soldiery on
this hand to satisfy upon the people, and the Senate and the people on
the other to be defended from the soldiery), seldom died any other
death than by one horn of this dilemma, as is noted more at large by
Machiavel.

But the Pretorian bands, those bestial executioners of their captain’s
tyranny upon others, and of their own upon him, having continued from
the time of Augustus, were by Constantine the Great (incensed against
them for taking part with his adversary Maxentius) removed from their
strong garrison which they held in Rome, and distributed into divers
provinces. The benefices of the soldiers that were hitherto held for
life and upon duty, were by this prince made hereditary, so that
the whole foundation whereupon this empire was first built being now
removed, shows plainly that the emperors must long before this have
found out some other way of support; and this was by stipendiating the
Goths, a people that, deriving their roots from the northern parts of
Germany, or out of Sweden, had, through their victories obtained against
Domitian, long since spread their branches to so near a neighborhood
with the Roman territories that they began to overshadow them. For the
emperors making use of them in their armies, as the French do at this
day of the Switz, gave them that under the notion of a stipend, which
they received as tribute, coming, if there were any default in the
payment, so often to distrain for it, that in the time of Honorius
they sacked Rome, and possessed themselves of Italy. And such was the
transition of ancient into modern prudence, or that breach, which being
followed in every part of the Roman Empire with inundations of Vandals,
Huns, Lombards, Franks, Saxons, overwhelmed ancient languages, learning,
prudence, manners, cities, changing the names of rivers, countries,
seas, mountains, and men; Camillus, Caesar, and Pompey, being come to
Edmund, Richard, and Geoffrey.

To open the groundwork or balance of these new politicians: “Feudum,”
 says Calvin the lawyer, “is a Gothic word of divers significations;
for it is taken either for war, or for a possession of conquered lands,
distributed by the victor to such of his captains and soldiers as had
merited in his wars, upon condition to acknowledge him to be their
perpetual lord, and themselves to be his subjects.”

Of these there were three kinds or orders: the first of nobility
distinguished by the titles of dukes, marquises, earls, and these
being gratified with the cities, castles, and villages of the conquered
Italians, their feuds participated of royal dignity, and were called
regalia, by which they had right to coin money, create magistrates, take
toll, customs, confiscations, and the like.

Feuds of the second order were such as, with the consent of the King,
were bestowed by these feudatory princes upon men of inferior quality,
called their barons, on condition that next to the King they should
defend the dignities and fortunes of their lords in arms.

The lowest order of feuds were such, as being conferred by those of the
second order upon private men, whether noble not noble, obliged them in
the like duty to their superiors; the were called vavasors. And this is
the Gothic balance, by which all the kingdoms this day in Christendom
were at first erected; for which cause, if I had time, I should open in
this place the Empire of Germany, and the Kingdoms of France, Spain, and
Poland; but so much as has been said being sufficient for the discovery
of the principles of modern prudence in general, I shall divide the
remainder of my discourse, which is more particular, into three parts:

The first, showing the constitution of the late monarchy of Oceana;

The second, the dissolution of the same; and

The third, the generation of the present commonwealth.

The constitution of the late monarchy of Oceana is to be considered
in relation to the different nations by whom it has been successively
subdued and governed. The first of these were the Romans, the second the
Teutons, the third the Scandians, and the fourth the Neustrians.

The government of the Romans, who held it as a province, I shall omit,
because I am to speak of their provincial government in another place,
only it is to be remembered here, that if we have given over running up
and down naked, and with dappled hides, learned to write and read, and
to be instructed with good arts, for all these we are beholden to the
Romans, either immediately or mediately by the Teutons; for that
the Teutons had the arts from no other hand is plain enough by their
language, which has yet no word to signify either writing or reading,
but what is derived from the Latin. Furthermore, by the help of these
arts so learned, we have been capable of that religion which we have
long since received; wherefore it seems to me that we ought not to
detract from the memory of the Romans, by whose means we are, as it
were, of beasts become men, and by whose means we might yet of obscure
and ignorant men (if we thought not too well of ourselves) become a wise
and a great people.

The Romans having governed Oceana provincially, the Teutons were the
first that introduced the form of the late monarchy. To these succeeded
the Scandians, of whom (because their reign was short, as also because
they made little alteration in the government as to the form) I shall
take no notice. But the Teutons going to work upon the Gothic balance,
divided the whole nation into three sorts of feuds, that of ealdorman,
that of king’s thane, and that of middle thane.

When the kingdom was first divided into precincts will be as hard to
show as when it began first to be governed. It being impossible that
there should be any government without some division. The division that
was in use with the Teutons was by counties, and every county had either
its ealdorman or high reeve. The title of ealdorman came in time to
eorl, or erl, and that of high reeve to high sheriff.

Earl of the shire or county denoted the king’s thane, or tenant by grand
sergeantry or knight’s service, in chief or in capite; his possessions
were sometimes the whole territory from whence he had his denomination,
that is, the whole county; sometimes more than one county, and sometimes
less, the remaining part being in the crown. He had also sometimes a
third, or some other customary part of the profits of certain cities,
boroughs, or other places within his earldom. For an example of the
possessions of earls in ancient times, Ethelred had to him and his heirs
the whole Kingdom of Mercia, containing three or four counties; and
there were others that had little less.

King’s thane was also an honorary title, to which he was qualified
that had five hides of land held immediately of the King by service of
personal attendance; insomuch that if a churl or countryman had thriven
to this proportion, having a church, a kitchen, a bell-house (that is,
a hall with a bell in it to call his family to dinner), a borough-gate
with a seat (that is, a porch) of his own, and any distinct office in
the King’s court, then was he the King’s thane. But the proportion of a
hide-land, otherwise called caruca, or a plough-land, is difficult to
be understood, because it was not certain; nevertheless it is generally
conceived to be so much as may be managed with one plough, and would
yield the maintenance of the same, with the appurtenances in all kinds.

The middle thane was feudal, but not honorary; he was also called a
vavasor, and his lands a vavasory, which held of some mesne lord, and
not immediately of the King.

Possessions and their tenures, being of this nature, show the balance
of the Teuton monarchy, wherein the riches of earls were so vast that to
arise from the balance of their dominion to their power, they were
not only called reguli, or little kings, but were such indeed; their
jurisdiction being of two sorts, either that which was exercised by them
in the court of their countries, or in the high court of the kingdom.

In the territory denominating an earl, if it were all his own, the
courts held, and the profits of that jurisdiction were to his own
use and benefit. But if he had but some part of his county, then his
jurisdiction and courts, saving perhaps in those possessions that were
his own, were held by him to the King’s use and benefit; that is, he
commonly supplied the office which the sheriffs regularly executed in
counties that had no earls, and whence they came to be called viscounts.
The court of the county that had an earl was held by the earl and the
bishop of the diocese, after the manner of the sheriffs’ turns to this
day; by which means both the ecclesiastical and temporal laws were given
in charge together to the country. The causes of vavasors or vavasories
appertained to the cognizance of this court, where wills were proved,
judgment and execution given, cases criminal and civil determined.

The King’s thanes had the like jurisdiction in their thane lands as
lords in their manors, where they also kept courts.

Besides these in particular, both the earls and King’s thanes, together
with the bishops, abbots, and vavasors, or middle thanes, had in the
high court or parliament in the kingdom a more public jurisdiction,
consisting first of deliberative power for advising upon and assenting
to new laws; secondly, giving counsel in matters of state and thirdly,
of judicature upon suits and complaints. I shall not omit to enlighten
the obscurity of these times, in which there is little to be found of
a methodical constitution of this high court, by the addition of an
argument, which I conceive to bear a strong testimony to itself, though
taken out of a late writing that conceals the author. “It is well
known,” says he, “that in every quarter of the realm a great many
boroughs do yet send burgesses to the parliament which nevertheless be
so anciently and so long since decayed and gone to naught, that they
cannot be showed to have been of any reputation since the Conquest, much
less to have obtained any such privilege by the grant of any succeeding
king: wherefore these must have had this right by more ancient usage,
and before the Conquest, they being unable now to show whence they
derived it.”

This argument, though there be more, I shall pitch upon as sufficient to
prove: First, that the lower sort of the people had right to session
in Parliament during the time of the Teutons. Secondly, that they were
qualified to the same by election in their boroughs, and if knights of
the shire, as no doubt they are, be as ancient in the counties. Thirdly
if it be a good argument to say that the commons during the reign of the
Teutons were elected into Parliament because they are so now, and no man
can show when this custom began, I see not which way it should be an ill
one to say that the commons during the reign of the Teutons constituted
also a distinct house because they do so now, unless any man can show
that they did ever sit in the same house with the lords. Wherefore
to conclude this part, I conceive for these, and other reasons to be
mentioned hereafter, that the Parliament of the Teutons consisted of the
King, the lords spiritual and temporal, and the commons of the nation,
notwithstanding the style of divers acts of Parliament, which runs,
as that of Magna Charta, in the King’s name only, seeing the same was
nevertheless enacted by the King, peers, and commons of the land, as is
testified in those words by a subsequent act.

The monarchy of the Teutons had stood in this posture about 220 years;
when Turbo, Duke of Neustria, making his claim to the crown of one of
their kings that died childless, followed it with successful arms, and,
being possessed of the kingdom, used it as conquered, distributing the
earldoms, thane-lands, bishoprics, and prelacies of the whole realm
among his Neustrians. From this time the earl came to be called comes,
consul, and dux, though consul and dux grew afterward out of use; the
King’s thanes came to be called barons, and their lands baronies;
the middle thane holding still of a mesne lord, retained the name of
vavasor.

The earl or comes continued to have the third part of the pleas of the
county paid to him by the sheriff or vice--comes, now a distinct officer
in every county depending upon the King; saving that such earls as had
their counties to their own use were now counts-palatine, and had under
the King regal jurisdiction; insomuch that they constituted their own
sheriffs, granted pardons, and issued writs in their own names; nor did
the King’s writ of ordinary justice run in their dominions till a late
statute, whereby much of this privilege was taken away.

For barons they came from henceforth to be in different times of three
kinds: barons by their estates and tenures, barons by writ, and barons
created by letters-patent. From Turbo the first to Adoxus the seventh
king from the Conquest, barons had their denomination from their
possessions and tenures. And these were either spiritual or temporal;
for not only the thanelands, but the possessions of bishops, as also of
some twenty six abbots, and two priors, were now erected into baronies,
whence the lords spiritual that had suffrage in the Teuton Parliament as
spiritual lords came to have it in the Neustrian Parliament as barons,
and were made subject, which they had not formerly been, to knights’
service in chief. Barony coming henceforth to signify all honorary
possessions as well of earls as barons, and baronage to denote all
kinds of lords as well spiritual as temporal having right to sit
in Parliament, the baronies in this sense were sometimes more, and
sometimes fewer, but commonly about 200 or 250, containing in them a
matter of 60,000 feuda militum, or knights’ fees, whereof some 28,000
were in the clergy.

It is ill-luck that no man can tell what the land of a knight’s
fee, reckoned in some writs at £40 a year, and in others at £10, was
certainly worth, for by such a help we might have exactly demonstrated
the balance of this government. But, says Coke, it contained twelve
plough-lands, and that was thought to be the most certain account. But
this again is extremely uncertain; for one plough out of some land that
was fruitful might work more than ten out of some other that was
barren. Nevertheless, seeing it appears by Bracton, that of earldoms and
baronies it was wont to be said that the whole kingdom was composed, as
also that these, consisting of 60,000 knights’ fees, furnished 60,000
men for the King’s service, being the whole militia of this monarchy,
it cannot be imagined that the vavasories or freeholds in the people
amounted to any considerable proportion. Wherefore the balance and
foundation of this government were in the 60,000 knights’ fees, and
these being possessed by the 250 lords, it was a government of the few,
or of the nobility, wherein the people might also assemble, but could
have no more than a mere name. And the clergy, holding a third of the
whole nation, as is plain by the Parliament-roll, it is an absurdity
(seeing the clergy of France came first through their riches to be a
state of that kingdom) to acknowledge the people to have been a state
of this realm, and not to allow it to the clergy, who were so much more
weighty in the balance, which is that of all other whence a state or
order in a government is denominated. Wherefore this monarchy consisted
of the King, and of the three ordines regni, or estates, the lords
spiritual and temporal, and the commons; it consisted of these, I say,
as to the balance, though, during the reign of some of these kings, not
as to the administration.

For the ambition of Turbo, and some of those that more immediately
succeeded him, to be absolute princes, strove against the nature of
their foundation, and, inasmuch as he had divided almost the whole
realm among his Neustrians, with some encouragement for a while. But
the Neustrians, while they were but foreign plants, having no security
against the natives, but in growing up by their princes’ sides, were no
sooner well rooted in their vast dominions than they came up according
to the infallible consequence of the balance domestic, and, contracting
the national interest of the baronage, grew as fierce in the vindication
of the ancient rights and liberties of the same, as if they had been
always natives: whence, the kings being as obstinate on the one side for
their absolute power, as these on the other for their immunities, grew
certain wars, which took their denomination from the barons.

This fire about the middle of the reign of Adoxus began to break out.
And whereas the predecessors of this King had divers times been forced
to summon councils resembling those of the Teutons, to which the lords
only that were barons by dominion and tenure had hitherto repaired,
Adoxus, seeing the effects of such dominion, began first not to call
such as were barons by writ (for that was according to the practice of
ancient times), but to call such by writs as were otherwise no barons;
by which means, striving to avoid the consequence of the balance, in
coming unwillingly to set the government straight, he was the first that
set it awry. For the barons in his reign, and his successors, having
vindicated their ancient authority, restored the Parliament with all
the rights and privileges of the same, saving that from thenceforth the
kings had found out a way whereby to help themselves against the mighty
by creatures of their own, and such as had no other support but by their
favor.. By which means this government, being indeed the masterpiece of
modern prudence, has been cried up to the skies, as the only invention
whereby at once to maintain the sovereignty of a prince and the
liberty of the people. Whereas, indeed, it has been no other than a
wrestling-match, wherein the nobility, as they have been stronger, have
thrown the King, or the King, if he has been stronger, has thrown the
nobility; or the King, where he has had a nobility, and could bring
them to his party has thrown the people, as in France and Spain; or
the people, where they have had no nobility, or could get them to be of
their party, have thrown the King, as in Holland, and of later times in
Oceana.

But they came not to this strength, but by such approaches and degrees
as remain to be further opened. For whereas the barons by writ, as the
sixty-four abbots and thirty-six priors that were so called, were but
pro temp ore, Dicotome, being the twelfth king from the Conquest, began
to make barons by letters-patent, with the addition of honorary pensions
for the maintenance of their dignities to them and their heirs; so that
they were hands in the King’s purse and had no shoulders for his throne.
Of these, when the house of peers came once to be full, as will be seen
hereafter, there was nothing more empty. But for the present, the throne
having other supports, they did not hurt that so much as they did
the King; for the old barons, taking Dicotome’s prodigality to such
creatures so ill that they deposed him, got the trick of it, and never
gave over setting up and pulling down their kings according to their
various interests, and that faction of the White and Red, into which
they have been thenceforth divided, till Panurgus, the eighteenth king
from the Conquest, was more by their favor than his right advanced to
the crown. This King, through his natural subtlety, reflecting at once
upon the greatness of their power, and the inconstancy of their favor,
began to find another flaw in this kind of government, which is also
noted by Machiavel namely, that a throne supported by a nobility is not
so hard to be ascended as kept warm. Wherefore his secret jealousy, lest
the dissension of the nobility, as it brought him in might throw him
out, made him travel in ways undiscovered by them, to ends as little
foreseen by himself, while to establish his own safety, he, by mixing
water with their wine, first began to open those sluices that have since
overwhelmed not the King only, but the throne. For whereas a nobility
strikes not at the throne, without which they cannot subsist, but at
some king that they do not like, popular power strikes through the King
at the throne, as that which is incompatible with it. Now that Panurgus,
in abating the power of the nobility, was the cause whence it came to
fall into the hands of the people, appears by those several statutes
that were made in his reign, as that for population, those against
retainers, and that for alienations.

By the statute of population, all houses of husbandry that were used
with twenty acres of ground and upward, were to be maintained and kept
up forever with a competent proportion of land laid to them, and in no
wise, as appears by a subsequent statute, to be severed. By which means
the houses being kept up, did of necessity enforce dwellers; and the
proportion of land to be tilled being kept up, did of necessity enforce
the dweller not to be a beggar or cottager, but a man of some substance,
that might keep hinds and servants and set the plough a-going. This
did mightily concern, says the historian of that prince, the might and
manhood of the kingdom, and in effect amortize a great part of the lands
to the hold and possession of the yeomanry or middle people, who living
not in a servile or indigent fashion, were much unlinked from dependence
upon their lords, and living in a free and plentiful manner, became
a more excellent infantry, but such a one upon which the lords had so
little power, that from henceforth they may be computed to have been
disarmed.

And as they had lost their infantry after this manner, so their cavalry
and commanders were cut off by the statute of retainers; for whereas it
was the custom of the nobility to have younger brothers of good houses,
mettled fellows, and such as were knowing in the feats of arms about
them, they who were longer followed with so dangerous a train, escaped
not such punishments as made them take up.

Henceforth the country lives and great tables of the nobility, which
no longer nourished veins that would bleed for them, were fruitless and
loathsome till they changed the air, and of princes became courtiers;
where their revenues, never to have been exhausted by beef and mutton,
were found narrow, whence followed racking of rents, and at length sale
of lands, the riddance through the statute of alienations being rendered
far more quick and facile than formerly it had been through the new
invention of entails.

To this it happened that Coraunus, the successor of that King,
dissolving the abbeys, brought, with the declining state of the
nobility, so vast a prey to the industry of the people, that the balance
of the commonwealth was too apparently in the popular party to be
unseen by the wise Council of Queen Parthenia, who, converting her reign
through the perpetual love tricks that passed between her and her people
into a kind of romance, wholly neglected the nobility. And by these
degrees came the House of Commons to raise that head, which since has
been so high and formidable to their princes that they have looked
pale upon those assemblies. Nor was there anything now wanting to the
destruction of the throne, but that the people, not apt to see their own
strength, should be put to feel it; when a prince, as stiff in disputes
as the nerve of monarchy was grown slack, received that unhappy
encouragement from his clergy which became his utter ruin, while
trusting more to their logic than the rough philosophy of his
Parliament, it came to an irreparable breach; for the house of peers,
which alone had stood in this gap, now sinking down between the King and
the commons, showed that Crassus was dead and the isthmus broken. But
a monarchy, divested of its nobility, has no refuge under heaven but an
army. Wherefore the dissolution of this government caused the war, not
the war the dissolution of this government.

Of the King’s success with his arms it is not necessary to give any
further account than that they proved as ineffectual as his nobility;
but without a nobility or an army (as has been shown) there can be no
monarchy. Wherefore what is there in nature that can arise out of these
ashes but a popular government, or a new monarchy to be erected by the
victorious army?

To erect a monarchy, be it never so new, unless like Leviathan you can
hang it, as the country-fellow speaks, by geometry (for what else is it
to say, that every other man must give up his will to the will of
this one man without any other foundation?), it must stand upon old
principles--that is, upon a nobility or an army planted on a due balance
of dominion. Aut viam inveniam aut faciam, was an adage of Caesar, and
there is no standing for a monarchy unless it finds this balance, or
makes it. If it finds it, the work is done to its hand; for, where there
is inequality of estates, there must be inequality of power; and where
there is inequality of power, there can be no commonwealth. To make it,
the sword must extirpate out of dominion all other roots of power, and
plant an army upon that ground. An army may be planted nationally or
provincially. To plant it nationally, it must be in one of the four
ways mentioned, that is, either monarchically in part, as the Roman
beneficiarii; or monarchically, in the whole, as the Turkish Timariots;
aristocratically that is, by earls and barons, as the Neustrians were
planted by Turbo; or democratically, that is, by equal lots, as the
Israelitish army in the land of Canaan by Joshua. In every one of these
ways there must not only be confiscations, but confiscations to such a
proportion as may answer to the work intended.

Confiscation of a people that never fought against you, but whose arms
you have borne, and in which you have been victorious, and this upon
premeditation and in cold blood, I should have thought to be against
any example in human nature, but for those alleged by Machiavel
of Agathocles, and Oliveretto di Fermo, the former whereof being
captain-general of the Syracusans, upon a day assembled the Senate and
the people, as if he had something to communicate with them, when at a
sign given he cut the senators in pieces to a man, and all the richest
of the people, by which means he came to be king. The proceedings of
Oliveretto, in making himself Prince of Fermo, were somewhat different
in circumstances, but of the same nature. Nevertheless Catiline, who
had a spirit equal to any of these in his intended mischief, could never
bring the like to pass in Rome. The head of a small commonwealth, such
a one as was that of Syracuse or Fermo, is easily brought to the block;
but that a populous nation, such as Rome, had not such a one, was the
grief of Nero. If Sylvia or Caesar attained to be princes, it was by
civil war, and such civil war as yielded rich spoils, there being a vast
nobility to be confiscated; which also was the case in Oceana, when
it yielded earth by earldoms, and baronies to the Neustrian for the
plantation of his new potentates. Where a conqueror finds the riches of
a land in the hands of the few, the forfeitures are easy, and amount to
vast advantage; but where the people have equal shares, the confiscation
of many comes to little, and is not only dangerous but fruitless.

The Romans, in one of their defeats of the Volsci, found among the
captives certain Tusculans, who, upon examination, confessed that the
arms they bore were by command of their State; whereupon information
being given to the Senate by the general Camillus, he was forthwith
commanded to march against Tusculum which doing accordingly, he found
the Tusculan fields full of husbandmen, that stirred not otherwise from
the plough than to furnish his army with all kinds of accommodations
and victuals. Drawing near to the city, he saw the gates wide open, the
magistrates coming out in their gowns to salute and bid him welcome;
entering, the shops were all at work, and open, the streets sounded
with the noise of schoolboys at their books; there was no face of war.
Whereupon Camillus, causing the Senate to assemble, told them, that
though the art was understood, yet had they at length found out the true
arms whereby the Romans were most undoubtedly to be conquered, for
which cause he would not anticipate the Senate, to which he desired them
forthwith to send, which they did accordingly; and their dictator with
the rest of their ambassadors being found by the Roman senators as
they went into the house standing sadly at the door were sent for in as
friends, and not as enemies; where the dictator having said, “If we
have offended, the fault was not so great as is our penitence and your
virtue,” the Senate gave them peace forthwith, and soon after made the
Tusculans citizens of Rome.

But putting the case, of which the world is not able to show an example,
that the forfeiture of a populous nation, not conquered, but friends,
and in cool blood, might be taken, your army must be planted in one of
the ways mentioned. To plant it in the way of absolute monarchy, that
is, upon feuds for life, such as the Timars, a country as large and
fruitful as that of Greece, would afford you but 16,000 Timariots, for
that is the most the Turk (being the best husband that ever was of
this kind) makes of it at this day: and if Oceana, which is less in
fruitfulness by one-half, and in extent by three parts, should have no
greater a force, whoever breaks her in one battle, may be sure she shall
never rise; for such (as was noted by Machiavel) is the nature of the
Turkish monarchy, if you break it in two battles, you have destroyed its
whole militia, and the rest being all slaves, you hold it without any
further resistance. Wherefore the erection of an absolute monarchy in
Oceana, or in any other country that is no larger, without making it a
certain prey to the first invader is altogether impossible.

To plant by halves, as the Roman emperors did their beneficiaries,
or military colonies, it must be either for life; and this an army of
Oceaners in their own country, especially having estates of inheritance,
will never bear because such an army so planted is as well confiscated
as the people; nor had the Mamelukes been contented with such usage in
Egypt, but that they were foreigners, and daring not to mix with the
natives, it was of absolute necessity to their being.

Or planting them upon inheritance, whether aristocratically as the
Neustrians, or democratically as the Israelites, they grow up by certain
consequences into the national interest, and this, if they be planted
popularly, comes to a commonwealth; if by way of nobility, to a mixed
monarchy, which of all other will be found to be the only kind of
monarchy whereof this nation, or any other that is of no greater
extent, has been or can be capable; for if the Israelites, though their
democratical balance, being fixed by their agrarian, stood firm, be yet
found to have elected kings, it was because, their territory lying open,
they were perpetually invaded, and being perpetually invaded, turned
themselves to anything which, through the want of experience, they
thought might be a remedy; whence their mistake in election of their
kings, under whom they gained nothing, but, on the contrary, lost all
they had acquired by their commonwealth, both estates and liberties, is
not only apparent, but without parallel. And if there have been, as
was shown, a kingdom of the Goths in Spain, and of the Vandals in Asia,
consisting of a single person and a Parliament (taking a parliament to
be a council of the people only, without a nobility), it is expressly
said of those councils that they deposed their kings as often as they
pleased; nor can there be any other consequence of such a government,
seeing where there is a council of the people they do never receive
laws, but give them; and a council giving laws to a single person, he
has no means in the world whereby to be any more than a subordinate
magistrate but force: in which case he is not a single person and a
parliament, but a single person and an army, which army again must be
planted as has been shown, or can be of no long continuance.

It is true, that the provincial balance bring in nature quite contrary
to the national, you are no way to plant a provincial army upon
dominion. But then you must have a native territory in strength,
situation, or government, able to overbalance the foreign, or you can
never hold it. That an army should in any other case be long supported
by a mere tax, is a mere fancy as void of all reason and experience as
if a man should think to maintain such a one by robbing of orchards; for
a mere tax is but pulling of plum-trees, the roots whereof are in other
men’s grounds, who, suffering perpetual violence, come to hate the
author of it; and it is a maxim, that no prince that is hated by his
people can be safe. Arms planted upon dominion extirpate enemies and
make friends; but maintained by a mere tax, have enemies that have
roots, and friends that have none.

To conclude, Oceana, or any other nation of no greater extent, must have
a competent nobility, or is altogether incapable of monarchy; for where
there is equality of estates, there must be equality of power, and where
there is equality of power, there can be no monarchy.

To come then to the generation of the commonwealth. It has been shown
how, through the ways and means used by Panurgus to abase the nobility,
and so to mend that flaw which we have asserted to be incurable in this
kind of constitution, he suffered the balance to fall into the power of
the people, and so broke the government; but the balance being in the
people, the commonwealth (though they do not see it) is already in the
nature of them. There wants nothing else but time, which is slow
and dangerous, or art, which would be more quick and secure, for the
bringing those native arms, wherewithal they are found already, to
resist, they know not how, everything that opposes them, to such
maturity as may fix them upon their own strength and bottom.

But whereas this art is prudence, and that part of prudence which
regards the present work is nothing else but the skill of raising such
superstructures of government as are natural to the known foundations,
they never mind the foundation, but through certain animosities,
wherewith by striving one against another they are infected, or through
freaks, by which, not regarding the course of things, nor how they
conduce to their purpose, they are given to building in the air, come to
be divided and subdivided into endless parties and factions, both civil
and ecclesiastical, which, briefly to open, I shall first speak of the
people in general, and then of their divisions.

A people, says Machiavel, that is corrupt, is not capable of a
commonwealth. But in showing what a corrupt people is, he has either
involved himself, or me; nor can I otherwise come out of the labyrinth,
than by saying, the balance altering a people, as to the foregoing
government, must of necessity be corrupt; but corruption in this sense
signifies no more than that the corruption of one government, as in
natural bodies, is the generation of another. Wherefore if the balance
alters from monarchy, the corruption of the people in this case is
that which makes them capable of a commonwealth. But whereas I am not
ignorant that the corruption which he means is in manners, this also is
from the balance. For the balance leading from monarchical into popular
abates the luxury of the nobility, and, enriching the people, brings the
government from a more private to a more public interest which coming
nearer, as has been shown, to justice and right reason, the people upon
a like alteration is so far from such a corruption of manners as should
render them incapable of a commonwealth, that of necessity they must
thereby contract such a reformation of manners as will bear no other
kind of government. On the other side, where the balance changes from
popular to oligarchical or monarchical, the public interest, with the
reason and justice included in the sane, becomes more private; luxury is
introduced in the room of temperance, and servitude in that of freedom,
which causes such a corruption of manners both in the nobility and
people, as, by the example of Rome in the time of the Triumvirs, is more
at large discovered by the author to have been altogether incapable of a
commonwealth.

But the balance of Oceana changing quite contrary to that of Rome, the
manners of the people were not thereby corrupted, but, on the contrary,
adapted to a commonwealth. For differences of opinion in a people not
rightly informed of their balance, or a division into parties (while
there is not any common ligament of power sufficient to reconcile or
hold them) is no sufficient proof of corruption. Nevertheless, seeing
this must needs be matter of scandal and danger, it will not be amiss,
in showing what were the parties, to show what were their errors.

The parties into which this nation was divided, were temporal or
spiritual; and the temporal parties were especially two, the one
royalists, the other republicans, each of which asserted their different
causes, either out of prudence or ignorance, out of interest or
conscience.

For prudence, either that of the ancients is inferior to the modern,
which we have hitherto been setting face to face, that anyone may judge,
or that of the royalist must be inferior to that of the commonwealths
man. And for interest, taking the commonwealths man to have really
intended the public, for otherwise he is a hypocrite and the worst of
men, that of the royalist must of necessity have been more private.
Wherefore, the whole dispute will come upon matter of conscience, and
this, whether it be urged by the right of kings, the obligation of
former laws, or of the oath of allegiance, is absolved by the balance.

For if the right of kings were as immediately derived from the breath
of God as the life of man, yet this excludes not death and dissolution.
But, that the dissolution of the late monarchy was as natural as the
death of man, has been already shown. Wherefore it remains with the
royalists to discover by what reason or experience it is possible for a
monarchy to stand upon a popular balance; or, the balance being popular,
as well the oath of allegiance, as all other monarchical laws, imply an
impossibility, and are therefore void.

To the commonwealths man I have no more to say, but that if he excludes
any party, he is not truly such, nor shall ever found a commonwealth
upon the natural principle of the same, which is justice. And the
royalist for having not opposed a commonwealth in Oceana, where the
laws were so ambiguous that they might be eternally disputed and never
reconciled, can neither be justly for that cause excluded from his full
and equal share in the government; nor prudently for this reason, that
a commonwealth consisting of a party will be in perpetual labor for her
own destruction: whence it was that the Romans, having conquered the
Albans, incorporated them with equal right into the commonwealth. And
if the royalists be “flesh of your flesh,” and nearer of blood than were
the Albans to the Romans, you being also both Christians, the argument
is the stronger. Nevertheless there is no reason that a commonwealth
should any more favor a party remaining in fixed opposition against it,
than Brutus did his own sons. But if it fixes them upon that opposition,
it is its own fault, not theirs; and this is done by excluding them. Men
that have equal possessions and the same security for their estates and
their liberties that you have, have the same cause with you to defend
both; but if you will liberty, though for monarchy; and be trampling,
they fight for you for tyranny, though under the name of a commonwealth:
the nature of orders in a government rightly instituted being void of
all jealousy, because, let the parties which it embraces be what they
will, its orders are such as they neither would resist if they could,
nor could if they would, as has been partly already shown, and will
appear more at large by the following model.

The parties that are spiritual are of more kinds than I need mention;
some for a national religion, and others for liberty of conscience,
with such animosity on both sides, as if these two could not consist
together, and of which I have already sufficiently spoken, to show that
indeed the one cannot well subsist without the other But they of all the
rest are the most dangerous, who, holding that the saints must govern,
go about to reduce the commonwealth to a party, as well for the reasons
already shown, as that their pretences are against Scripture, where the
saints are commanded to submit to the higher powers, and to be subject
to the ordinance of man. And that men, pretending under the notion
of saints or religion to civil power, have hitherto never failed to
dishonor that profession, the world is full of examples, whereof I shall
confine myself at present only to a couple, the one of old, the other of
new Rome.

In old Rome, the patricians or nobility pretending to be the godly
party, were questioned by the people for engrossing all the magistracies
of that commonwealth, and had nothing to say why they did so, but that
magistracy required a kind of holiness which was not in the people;
at which the people were filled with such indignation as had come to
cutting of throats, if the nobility had not immediately laid by the
insolency of that plea; which nevertheless when they had done, the
people for a long time after continued to elect no other but patrician
magistrates.

The example of new Rome in the rise and practice of the hierarchy (too
well known to require any further illustration) is far more immodest.

This has been the course of nature; and when it has pleased or shall
please God to introduce anything that is above the course of nature,
he will, as he has always done, confirm it by miracle; for so in his
prophecy of the reign of Christ upon earth he expressly promises, seeing
that “the souls of them that were beheaded for Jesus, shall be seen to
live and reign with him;” which will be an object of sense, the rather,
because the rest of the dead are not to live again till the thousand
years be finished. And it is not lawful for men to persuade us that a
thing already is, though there be no such object of our sense, which God
has told us shall not be till it be an object of our sense.

The saintship of a people as to government, consists in the election
of magistrates fearing God, and hating covetousness, and not in their
confining themselves, or being confined, to men of this or that party or
profession. It consists in making the most prudent and religious choice
they can; yet not in trusting to men, but, next God, to their own
orders. “Give us good men, and they will make us good laws,” is the
maxim of a demagogue, and is (through the alteration which is commonly
perceivable in men, when they have power to work their own wills)
exceeding fallible. But “give us good orders, and they will make us
good men,” is the maxim of a legislator, and the most infallible in the
politics.

But these divisions (however there be some good men that look sadly on
them) are trivial things; first as to the civil concern, because the
government, whereof this nation is capable, being once seen, takes
in all interests. And, secondly, as to the spiritual; because as the
pretence of religion has always been turbulent in broken governments, so
where the government has been sound and steady, religion has never
shown itself with any other face than that of its natural sweetness
and tranquillity, nor is there any reason why it should, wherefore
the errors of the people are occasioned by their governors. If they
be doubtful of the way, or wander from it, it is because their guides
misled them; and the guides of the people are never so well qualified
for leading by any virtue of their own, as by that of the government.

The government of Oceana (as it stood at the time whereof we discourse,
consisting of one single Council of the people, exclusively of the King
and the Lords) was called a Parliament: nevertheless the parliaments of
the Teutons and of the Neustrians consisted, as has been shown, of the
King, lords, and commons; wherefore this, under an old name, was a
new thing a parliament consisting of a single assembly elected by the
people, and invested with the whole power of the government, without
any covenants, conditions, or orders whatsoever. So new a thing, that
neither ancient nor modern prudence can show any avowed example of the
like. And there is scarce anything that seems to me so strange as that
(whereas there was nothing more familiar with these councillors than to
bring the Scripture to the house) there should not be a man of them that
so much as offered to bring the house to the Scripture, wherein, as
has been shown, is contained that original, whereof all the rest of the
commonwealths seem to be copies. Certainly if Leviathan (who is surer
of nothing than that a popular commonwealth consists but of one council)
transcribed his doctrine out of this assembly, for him to except against
Aristotle and Cicero for writing out of their own commonwealths was not
so fair play; or if the Parliament transcribed out of him, it had been
an honor better due to Moses. But where one of them should have an
example but from the other, I cannot imagine, there being nothing of
this kind that I can find in story, but the oligarchy of Athens, the
Thirty Tyrants of the same, and the Roman Decemvirs.

For the oligarchy, Thucydides tells us, that it was a Senate or council
of 400, pretending to a balancing council of the people consisting of
5,000, but not producing them; wherein you have the definition of
an oligarchy, which is a single council both debating and resolving,
dividing and choosing, and what that must come to was shown by the
example of the girls, and is apparent by the experience of all times;
wherefore the thirty set up by the Lacedaemonians (when they had
conquered Athens) are called tyrants by all authors, Leviathan only
excepted, who will have them against all the world to have been an
aristocracy, but for what reason I cannot imagine; these also, as void
of any balance, having been void of that which is essential to every
commonwealth, whether aristocratical or popular, except he be pleased
with them, because that, according to the testimony of Xenophon, they
killed more men in eight months than the Lacedaemonians had done in ten
years; “oppressing the people (to use Sir Walter Raleigh’s words) with
all base and intolerable slavery.”

The usurped government of the Decemvirs in Rome was of the same kind.
Wherefore in the fear of God let Christian legislators (setting the
pattern given in the Mount on the one side, and these execrable examples
on the other) know the right hand from the left; and so much the rather,
because those things which do not conduce to the good of the governed
are fallacious, if they appear to be good for the governors. God, in
chastising a people, is accustomed to burn his rod. The empire of these
oligarchies was not so violent as short, nor did they fall upon the
people, but in their own immediate ruin. A council without a balance is
not a commonwealth, but an oligarchy; and every oligarchy, except it
be put to the defence of its wickedness or power against some outward
danger, is factious. Wherefore the errors of the people being from their
governors (which maxim in the politics bearing a sufficient testimony to
itself, is also proved by Machiavel), if the people of Oceana have been
factious, the cause is apparent, but what remedy?

In answer to this question, I come now to the army, of which the most
victorious captain and incomparable patriot, Olphaus Megaletor, was now
general, who being a much greater master of that art whereof I have made
a rough draught in these preliminaries, had such sad reflections upon
the ways and proceedings of the Parliament as cast him upon books and
all other means of diversion, among which he happened on this place of
Machiavel: “Thrice happy is that people which chances to have a man able
to give them such a government at once, as without alteration may secure
them of their liberties; seeing it was certain that Lacedaemon, in
observing the laws of Lycurgus, continued about 800 years without any
dangerous tumult or corruption.” My lord general (as it is said
of Themistocles, that he could not sleep for the glory obtained by
Miltiades at the battle of Marathon) took so new and deep an impression
at these words of the much greater glory of Lycurgus, that, being on
this side assaulted with the emulation of his illustrious object, and on
the other with the misery of the nation, which seemed (as it were
ruined by his victory) to cast itself at his feet, he was almost wholly
deprived of his natural rest, till the debate he had within himself came
to a firm resolution, that the greatest advantages of a commonwealth
are, first, that the legislator should be one man; and, secondly, that
the government should be made all together, or at once. For the first,
it is certain, says Machiavel, that a commonwealth is seldom or never
well turned or constituted, except it has been the work of one man; for
which cause a wise legislator, and one whose mind is firmly set, not
upon private but the public interest, not upon his posterity but upon
his country, may justly endeavor to get the sovereign power into his
own hands, nor shall any man that is master of reason blame such
extraordinary means as in that case will be necessary, the end proving
no other than the constitution of a well-ordered commonwealth.

The reason of this is demonstrable; for the ordinary means not failing,
the commonwealth has no need of a legislator, but the ordinary
means failing, there is no recourse to be had but to such as are
extraordinary. And, whereas a book or a building has not been known to
attain to its perfection if it has not had a sole author or architect, a
commonwealth, as to the fabric of it, is of the like nature. And thus
it may be made at once; in which there be great advantages; for a
commonwealth made at once, takes security at the same time it lends
money; and trusts not itself to the faith of men, but launches
immediately forth into the empire of laws, and, being set straight,
brings the manners of its citizens to its rule, whence followed that
uprightness which was in Lacedaemon. But manners that are rooted in men,
bow the tenderness of a commonwealth coming up by twigs to their bent,
whence followed the obliquity that was in Rome, and those perpetual
repairs by the consuls’ axes, and tribunes’ hammers, which could never
finish that commonwealth but in destruction.

My lord general being clear in these points, and of the necessity
of some other course than would be thought upon by the Parliament,
appointed a meeting of the army, where he spoke his sense agreeable
to these preliminaries with such success to the soldiery, that the
Parliament was soon after deposed; had he himself, in the great hall
of the Pantheon or palace of justice, situated in Emporium, the capital
city, was created by the universal suffrage of the army, Lord Archon, or
sole legislator of Oceana, upon which theatre you have, to conclude this
piece, a person introduced, whose fame shall never draw its curtain.

The Lord Archon being created, fifty select persons to assist him,
by laboring in the mines of ancient prudence, and bringing its hidden
treasures to new light, were added, with the style also of legislators,
and sat as a council, whereof he was the sole director and president.




PART II. THE COUNCIL OF LEGISLATORS

OF this piece, being the greater half of the whole work, I shall be able
at this time to give no further account, than very briefly to show at
what it aims.

My Lord Archon, in opening the Council of legislators, made it
appear how unsafe a thing it is to follow fancy in the fabric of a
commonwealth; and how necessary that the archives of ancient prudence
should be ransacked before any councillor should presume to offer any
other matter in order to the work in hand, or toward the consideration
to be had by the Council upon a model of government. Wherefore he caused
an urn to be brought, and every one of the councillors to draw a lot. By
the lots as they were drawn,

     The Commonwealth of                        Fell to

     Israel......                            Phosphorus de Auge
     Athens.....                             Navarchus de Paralo
     Lacedaemon.....                         Laco de Scytale
     Carthage..                              Mago de Syrtibus
     The Achaeans, AEtolians, and Lycians....Aratus de Isthmo
     The Switz Alpester                      de Fulmine
     Holland and the United Provinces        Glaucus de Ulna
     Rome......                              Dolabella de Enyo
     Venice.....                             Lynceus de Stella

These contained in them all those excellencies whereof a commonwealth
is capable; so that to have added more had been to no purpose. Upon
time given to the councillors, by their own studies and those of their
friends, to prepare themselves, they were opened in the order, and by
the persons mentioned at the Council of legislators, and afterward by
order of the same were repeated at the council of the prytans to the
people; for in drawing of the lots, there were about a dozen of them
inscribed with the letter P, whereby the councillors that drew them
became prytans.

The prytans were a committee or council sitting in the great hall of
Pantheon, to whom it was lawful for any man to offer anything in order
to the fabric of the commonwealth; for which cause, that they might not
be oppressed by the throng, there was a rail about the table where they
sat, and on each side of the same a pulpit; that on the right hand for
any man that would propose anything, and that on the left for any
other that would oppose him. And all parties (being indemnified by
proclamation of the Archon) were invited to dispute their own interests,
or propose whatever they thought fit (in order to the future government)
to the council of the prytans, who, having a guard of about two or three
hundred men, lest the heat of dispute might break the peace, had
the right of moderators, and were to report from time to time such
propositions or occurrences as they thought fit, to the Council of
legislators sitting more privately in the palace called Alma.

This was that which made the people (who were neither safely to
be admitted, nor conveniently to be excluded in the framing of the
commonwealth) verily believe, when it came forth, that it was no other
than that whereof they themselves had been the makers.

Moreover, this Council sat divers months after the publishing and during
the promulgation of the model to the people; by which means there is
scarce anything was said or written for or against the said model but
you shall have it with the next impression of this work, by way of
oration addressed to and moderated by the prytans.

By this means the Council of legislators had their necessary solitude
and due aim in their greater work, as being acquainted from time to time
with the pulse of the people, and yet without any manner of interruption
or disturbance.

Wherefore every commonwealth in its place having been opened by due
method--that is, first, by the people; secondly, by the Senate; and,
thirdly, by the magistracy-the Council upon mature debate took such
results or orders out of each, and out of every part of each of them,
as upon opening the same they thought fit; which being put from time to
time in writing by the clerk or secretary, there remained no more in
the conclusion, than putting the orders so taken together, to view and
examine them with a diligent eye, that it might be clearly discovered
whether they did interfere, or could anywise come to interfere or jostle
one with the other. For as such orders jostling or coming to jostle one
another are the certain dissolution of the commonwealth, so, taken upon
the proof of like experience, and neither jostling nor showing which way
they can possibly come to jostle one another, they make a perfect
and (for aught that in human prudence can be foreseen) an immortal
commonwealth.

And such was the art whereby my Lord Archon (taking council of
the Commonwealth of Israel, as of Moses; and of the rest of the
commonwealths, as of Jethro) framed the model of the Commonwealth of
Oceana.




PART III. THE MODEL OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF OCEANA

WHEREAS my Lord Archon, being from Moses and Lycurgus the first
legislator that hitherto is found in history to have introduced or
erected an entire commonwealth at once, happened, like them also, to be
more intent upon putting the same into execution or action, than into
writing; by which means the model came to be promulgated or published
with more brevity and less illustration than are necessary for their
understanding who have not been acquainted with the whole proceedings
of the Council of legislators, and of the prytans, where it was asserted
and cleared from all objections and doubts: to the end that I may supply
what was wanting in the promulgated epitome to a more full and
perfect narrative of the whole, I shall rather take the commonwealth
practically; and as it has now given an account of itself in some years’
revolutions (as Dicearchus is said to have done that of Lacedaemon,
first transcribed by his hand some three or four hundred years after
the institution), yet not omitting to add for proof to every order such
debates and speeches of the legislators in their Council, or at least
such parts of them as may best discover the reason of the government;
nor such ways and means as were used in the institution or rise of the
building, not to be so well conceived, without some knowledge given of
the engines wherewithal the mighty weight was moved. But through the
entire omission of the Council of legislators or workmen that squared
every stone to this structure in the quarries of ancient prudence, the
proof of the first part of this discourse will be lame, except I
insert, as well for illustration as to avoid frequent repetition, three
remarkable testimonies in this place.

The first is taken out of the Commonwealth of Israel: “So Moses
hearkened to the voice of Jethro, his father-in-law, and did all that
he had said. And Moses chose able men out of all Israel, and made them
heads over the people;” tribunes, as it is in the vulgar Latin; or
phylarchs, that is, princes of the tribes, sitting upon twelve thrones,
and judging the twelve tribes of Israel; and next to these he chose
rulers of thousands, rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers
of tens, which were the steps and rise of this commonwealth from its
foundation or root to its proper elevation or accomplishment in the
Sanhedrim, and the congregation, already opened in the preliminaries.

The second is taken out of Lacedaemon, as Lycurgus (for the greater
impression of his institutions upon the minds of his citizens) pretended
to have received the model of that commonwealth from the oracle of
Apollo at Delphos, the words whereof are thus recorded by Plutarch in
the life of that famous legislator: “When thou shalt have divided the
people into tribes (which were six) and oboe (which were five in every
tribe), thou shalt constitute the Senate, consisting, with the two
Kings, of thirty councillors, who, according as occasion requires, shall
cause the congregation to be assembled between the bridge and the river
Gnacion, where the Senate shall propose to the people, and dismiss them
without suffering them to debate.” The oboe were lineages into which
every tribe was divided, and in each tribe there was another division
containing all those of the same that were of military age, which being
called the mora, was subdivided into troops and companies that were kept
in perpetual discipline under the command of a magistrate called the
polemarch.

The third is taken out of the Commonwealth of Rome, or those parts of
it which are comprised in the first and second books of Livy, where the
people, according to the institution by Romulus, are first divided into
thirty curias or parishes, whereof he elected, by three out of each
curia, the Senate, which, from his reign to that or Servius Tullius,
proposed to the parishes or parochial congregations; and these
being called the Comitia curiata, had the election of the kings,
the confirmation of their laws, and the last appeal in matters of
judicature, as appears in the case of Horatius that killed his sister;
till, in the reign of Servius (for the other kings kept not to the
institution of Romulus), the people being grown somewhat, the power
of the Curiata was for the greater part translated to the Centuriata
comitia instituted by this King, which distributed the people, according
to the sense of valuation of their estates, into six classes, every one
containing about forty centuries, divided into youth and elders; the
youth for field-service, the elders for the defence of their territory,
all armed and under continual discipline, in which they assembled both
upon military and civil occasions. But when the Senate proposed to the
people, the horse only, whereof there were twelve centuries, consisting
of the richest sort over and above those of the foot enumerated, were
called with the first classes of the foot to the suffrage; or if these
accorded not, then the second classes were called to them, but seldom or
never any of the rest. Wherefore the people, after the expulsion of the
kings, growing impatient of this inequality, rested not till they had
reduced the suffrage as it had been in the Comitia curiato to the
whole people again; but in another way, that is to say, by the Comitia
tributa, which thereupon were instituted, being a council where the
people in exigencies made laws without the Senate, which laws were
called plebiscita. This Council is that in regard whereof Cicero and
other great wits so frequently inveigh against the people, and sometimes
even Livy as at the first institution of it. To say the truth, it was a
kind of anarchy, whereof the people could not be excusable, if there had
not, through the courses taken by the Senate, been otherwise a necessity
that they must have seen the commonwealth run into oligarchy.

The manner how the Comitia curiata, centuriata or tributa were called,
during the time of the commonwealth, to the suffrage, was by lot: the
curia, century, or tribe, whereon the first lot fell, being styled
principium, or the prerogative; and the other curioe, centuries or
tribes, whereon the second, third, and fourth lots, etc., fell, the
jure vocatoe. From henceforth not the first classes, as in the times
of Servius, but the prerogative, whether curia, century, or tribe, came
first to the suffrage, whose vote was called omen proerogativum, and
seldom failed to be leading to the rest of the tribes. The jure vocatoe,
in the order of their lots, came next: the manner of giving suffrage
was, by casting wooden tablets, marked for the affirmative or the
negative, into certain urns standing upon a scaffold, as they marched
over it in files, which for the resemblance it bore was called the
bridge. The candidate, or competitor, who had most suffrages in a curia,
century, or tribe, was said to have that curia, century, or tribe;
and he who had most of the curioe, centuries, or tribes, carried the
magistracy.

These three places being premised, as such upon which there will be
frequent reflection, I come to the narrative, divided into two parts,
the first containing the institution, the second the constitution of the
commonwealth, in each whereof I shall distinguish the orders, as those
which contain the whole model, from the rest of the discourse, which
tends only to the explanation or proof of them.

In the institution or building of a commonwealth, the first work, as
that of builders, can be no other than fitting and distributing the
materials.

The materials of a commonwealth are the people, and the people of Oceana
were distributed by casting them into certain divisions, regarding their
quality, their age, their wealth, and the places of their residence or
habitation, which was done by the ensuing orders.

The first order “distributes the people into freemen or citizens and
servants, while such; for if they attain to liberty, that is, to live of
themselves, they are freemen or citizens.”

This order needs no proof, in regard of the nature of servitude, which
is inconsistent with freedom, or participation of government in a
commonwealth.

The second order “distributes citizens into youth and elders (such as
are from eighteen years of age to thirty, being accounted youth; and
such as are of thirty and upward, elders), and establishes that
the youth shall be the marching armies, and the elders the standing
garrisons of this nation.”

  A commonwealth, whose arms are in the hands of her
servants, had need be situated, as is elegantly said of Venice by
Contarini, out of the reach of their clutches; witness the danger run
by that of Carthage in the rebellion of Spendius and Matho. But though
a city, if one swallow makes a summer, may thus chance to be safe, yet
shall it never be great; for if Carthage or Venice acquired any fame
in their arms, it is known to have happened through the mere virtue of
their captains, and not of their orders; wherefore Israel, Lacedaemon,
and Rome entailed their arms upon the prime of their citizens, divided,
at least in Lacedaemon and Rome, into youth and elders: the youth for
the field, and the elders for defence of the territory.

The third order “distributes the citizens into horse and foot, by the
sense or valuation of their estates; they who have above £100 a year in
lands, goods, or moneys, being obliged to be of the horse, and they
who have under that sum to be of the foot. But if a man has prodigally
wasted and spent his patrimony, he is neither capable of magistracy,
office, or suffrage in the commonwealth.”

Citizens are not only to defend the commonwealth, but according to their
abilities, as the Romans under Servius Tullius (regard had to their
estates), were some enrolled in the horse centuries, and others of the
foot, with arms enjoined accordingly, nor could it be otherwise in the
rest of the commonwealths, though out of historical remains, that are
so much darker, it be not so clearly probable. And the necessary
prerogative to be given by a commonwealth to estates, is in some measure
in the nature of industry, and the use of it to the public. “The Roman
people,” says Julius Exuperantius, “were divided into classes, and taxed
according to the value of their estates. All that were worth the sums
appointed were employed in the wars; for they most eagerly contend
for the victory; who fight for liberty in defence of their country and
possessions. But the poorer sort were polled only for their heads (which
was all they had) and kept in garrison at home in time of war; for these
might betray the armies for bread, by reason of their poverty, which is
the reason that Marius, to whom the care of the government ought not to
have been committed, was the first that led them into the field;” and
his success was accordingly. There is a mean in things; as exorbitant
riches overthrow the balance of a commonwealth, so extreme poverty
cannot hold it, nor is by any means to be trusted with it. The clause in
the order concerning the prodigal is Athenian, and a very laudable one;
for he that could not live upon his patrimony, if he comes to touch the
public money, makes a commonwealth bankrupt.

The fourth order “distributes the people according to the places of
their habitation, into parishes, hundreds, and tribes.”

For except the people be methodically distributed, they cannot be
methodically collected; but the being of a commonwealth consists in the
methodical collection of the people: wherefore you have the Israelitish
divisions into rulers of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties, and of
tens; and of the whole commonwealth into tribes: the Laconic into oboe,
moras, and tribes; the Roman into tribes, centuries, and classes; and
something there must of necessity be in every government of the like
nature, as that in the late monarchy--by counties. But this being the
only institution in Oceana, except that of the agrarian, which required
any charge or included any difficulty, engages me to a more particular
description of the manner how it was performed, as follows:

A thousand surveyors, commissioned and instructed by the Lord Archon
and the Council, being divided into two equal numbers, each under the
inspection of two surveyors-general, were distributed into the northern
and southern parts of the territory, divided by the river Hemisua, the
whole whereof contains about 10,000 parishes, some ten of those being
assigned to each surveyor; for as to this matter there needed no great
exactness, it tending only by showing whither everyone was to, begin, to
the more orderly carrying repair and whereabout to on of the work; the
nature of their instructions otherwise regarding rather the number of
the inhabitants than of the parishes. The surveyors, therefore, being
every one furnished with a convenient proportion of urns, balls,
and balloting-boxes--in the use whereof they had been formerly
exercised--and now arriving each at his respective parish, being with
the people by teaching them their first lesson, which was the ballot;
and though they found them in the beginning somewhat froward, as at
toys, with which, while they were in expectation of greater matters from
a Council of legislators, they conceived themselves to be abused, they
came within a little while to think them pretty sport, and at length
such as might very soberly be used in good earnest; whereupon the
surveyors began the institution included in--

The first order, requiring “That upon the first Monday next ensuing the
last of December the bigger bell in every parish throughout the nation
be rung at eight of the clock in the morning, and continue ringing
for the space of one hour; and that all the elders of the parish
respectively repair to the church before the bell has done ringing,
where, dividing themselves into two equal numbers, or as near equal as
may be, they shall take their places according to their dignities, if
they be of divers qualities, and according to their seniority, if they
be of the same, the one half on the one side, and the other half on the
other, in the body of the church, which done, they shall make oath to
the overseers of the parish for the time being (instead of these the
surveyors were to officiate at the institution, or first assembly) by
holding up their hands, to make a fair election according to the laws of
the ballot, as they are hereafter explained, of such persons, amounting
to a fifth part of their whole number, to be their deputies, and to
exercise their power in manner hereafter explained, as they shall think
in their consciences to be fittest for that trust, and will acquit
themselves of it to the best advantage of the commonwealth. And oath
being thus made, they shall proceed to election, if the elders of the
parish amount to 1,000 by the ballot of the tribe, as it is in due place
explained, and if the elders of the parish amount to fifty or upward,
but within the number of 1,000, by the ballot of the hundred, as it is
in due place explained. But, if the elders amount not to fifty, then
they shall proceed to the ballot of the parish, as it is in this place
and after this manner explained.

“The two overseers for the time being shall seat themselves at the upper
end of the middle alley, with a table before them, their faces being
toward the congregation, and the constable for the time being shall set
an urn before the table, into which he shall put so many balls as there
be elders present, whereof there shall be one that is gilded, the rest
being white; and when the constable has shaken the urn, sufficiently to
mix the balls, the overseers shall call the elders to the urn, who from
each side of the church shall come up the middle alley in two files,
every man passing by the urn, and drawing out one ball; which, if it be
silver, he shall cast into a bowl standing at the foot of the urn, and
return by the outward alley on his side to his place. But he who
draws the golden ball is the proposer, and shall be seated between the
overseers, where he shall begin in what order he pleases, and name such
as, upon his oath already taken, he conceives fittest to be chosen,
one by one, to the elders; and the party named shall withdraw while the
congregation is balloting his name by the double box or boxes appointed
and marked on the outward part, to show which side is affirmative
and which negative, being carried by a boy or boys appointed by the
overseers, to every one of the elders, who shall hold up a pellet made
of linen rags between his finger and his thumb, and put it after such
a manner into the box, as though no man can see into which side he puts
it, yet any man may see that he puts in but one pellet or suffrage. And
the suffrage of the congregation being thus, given, shall be returned
with the box or boxes to the overseers, who opening the same, shall pour
the affirmative balls into a white bowl standing upon the table on the
right hand, to be numbered by the first overseer; and the negative into
a green bowl standing on the left hand, to be numbered by the second
overseer; and the suffrages being numbered, he who has the major part in
the affirmative is one of the deputies of the parish, and when so many
deputies are chosen as amount to a full fifth part of the whole number
of the elders, the ballot for that time shall cease. The deputies being
chosen are to be listed by the overseers in order as they were chosen,
except only that such as are horse must be listed in the first place
with the rest, proportionable to the number of the congregation, after
this manner.”

Anno Domini


     THE LIST OF THE FIRST MOVER

     A.A. Equestrian Order, First Deputy
     B.B. Second Deputy,
     C.C. Third Deputy,
     D.D. Fourth Deputy,
     E.E. Fifty Deputy,

     Of the parish of  in the hundred of  and the tribe
     of, which parish at the present election contains twenty
     elders, whereof one is of the horse or equestrian order.

“The first and second in the list are overseers by consequence; the
third is the constable, and the fourth and fifth are churchwardens; the
persons so chosen are deputies of the parish for the space of one year
from their election, and no longer, nor may they be elected two years
together. This list, being the primum mobile, or first mover of
the commonwealth, is to be registered in a book diligently kept and
preserved by the overseers, who are responsible in their places, for
these and other duties to be hereafter mentioned, to the censors of the
tribe; and the congregation is to observe the present order, as they
will answer the contrary to the phylarch, or prerogative troop of the
tribe, which, in case of failure in the whole or any part of it, have
power to fine them or any of them at discretion, but under an appeal to
the Parliament.”

For proof of this order, first, in reason, it is with all politicians
past dispute that paternal power is in the right of nature; and this is
no other than the derivation of power from fathers of families as the
natural root of a commonwealth. And for experience, if it be otherwise
in that of Holland, I know no other example of the like kind. In Israel,
the sovereign power came clearly from the natural root, the elders of
the whole people; and Rome was born, Comitiis curiatis, in her parochial
congregations, out of which Romulus first raised her Senate, then all
the rest of the orders of that commonwealth, which rose so high: for the
depth of a commonwealth is the just height of it--

     “She raises up her head unto the skies,
     Near as her root unto the centre lies.”

And if the Commonwealth of Rome was born of thirty parishes, this of
Oceana was born of 10,000. But whereas mention in the birth of this
is made of an equestrian order, it may startle such as know that the
division of the people of Rome, at the institution of that commonwealth
into orders, was the occasion of its ruin. The distinction of the
patrician as a hereditary order from the very institution, engrossing
all the magistracies, was indeed the destruction of Rome; but to a
knight or one of the equestrian order, says Horace,

     “Si quadringentis sex septem millia desunt,
     Plebs eris.”

By which it should seem that this order was not otherwise hereditary
than a man’s estate, nor did it give any claim to magistracy; wherefore
you shall never find that it disquieted the commonwealth, nor does the
name denote any more in Oceana than the duty of such a man’s estate to
the public.

But the surveyors, both in this place and in others, forasmuch as they
could not observe all the circumstances of this order, especially that
of the time of election, did for the first as well as they could; and,
the elections being made and registered, took each of them copies
of those lists which were within their allotments, which done they
produced--

The sixth order, directing “in case a parson or vicar of a parish comes
to be removed by death or by the censors, that the congregation of the
parish assemble and depute one or two elders by the ballot, who upon
the charge of the parish shall repair to one of the universities of this
nation with a certificate signed by the overseers, and addressed to
the vice-chancellor, which certificate, giving notice of the death
or removal of the parson or vicar, of the value of the parsonage or
vicarage, and of the desire of the congregation to receive a probationer
from that university, the vice-chancellor, upon the receipt thereof,
shall call a convocation, and having made choice of a fit person, shall
return him in due time to the parish, where the person so returned shall
return the full fruits of the benefice or vicarage, and do the duty of
the parson or vicar, for the space of one year, as probationer; and
that being expired, the congregation of the elders shall put their
probationer to the ballot, and if he attains not to two parts in three
of the suffrage affirmative, he shall take his leave of the parish, and
they shall send in like manner as before for another probationer; but
if their probationer obtains two parts in three of the suffrage
affirmative, he is then pastor of that parish. And the pastor of the
parish shall pray with the congregation, preach the Word, and administer
the sacraments to the same, according to the directory to be hereafter
appointed by the Parliament. Nevertheless such as are of gathered
congregations, or from time to time shall join with any of them, are in
no wise obliged to this way of electing their teachers, or to give
their votes in this case, but wholly left to the liberty of their own
consciences, and to that way of worship which they shall choose, being
not popish, Jewish, or idolatrous. And to the end they may be the better
protected by the State in the exercise of the same, they are desired to
make choice, and such manner as they best like, of certain magistrates
in every one of their congregations, which we could wish might be four
in each of them, to be auditors in cases of differences or distaste, if
any through variety of opinions, that may be grievous or injurious to
them, shall fall out. And such auditors or magistrates shall have power
to examine the matter, and inform themselves, to the end that if they
think it of sufficient weight, they may acquaint the phylarch with it,
or introduce it into the Council of Religion; where all such causes
as those magistrates introduce shall from time to time be heard and
determined according to such laws as are or shall hereafter be provided
by the Parliament for the just defence of the liberty of conscience.”

This order consists of three parts, the first restoring the power of
ordination to the people, which, that it originally belongs to them,
is clear, though not in English yet in Scripture, where the apostles
ordained elders by the holding up of hands in every congregation, that
is, by the suffrage of the people, which was also given in some of
those cities by the ballot. And though it may be shown that the apostles
ordained some by the laying on of hands, it will not be shown that they
did so in every congregation.

Excommunication, as not clearly provable out of the Scripture, being
omitted, the second part of the order implies and establishes a national
religion; for there be degrees of knowledge in divine things; true
religion is not to be learned without searching the Scripture; the
Scriptures cannot be searched by us unless we have them to search; and
if we have nothing else, or (which is all one) understand nothing else
but a translation, we may be (as in the place alleged we have been)
beguiled or misled by the translation, while we should be searching the
true sense of the Scripture, which cannot be attained in a natural way
(and a commonwealth is not to presume upon that which is supernatural)
but by the knowledge of the original and of antiquity, acquired by our
own studies, or those of some others, for even faith comes by hearing.
Wherefore a commonwealth not making provision of men from time to time,
knowing in the original languages wherein the Scriptures were written,
and versed in those antiquities to which they so frequently relate, that
the true sense of them depends in great part upon that knowledge,
can never be secure that she shall not lose the Scripture, and by
consequence her religion; which to preserve she must institute some
method of this knowledge, and some use of such as have acquired it,
which amounts to a national religion.

The commonwealth having thus performed her duty toward God, as a
rational creature, by the best application of her reason to Scripture,
and for the preservation of religion in the purity of the same, yet
pretends not to infallibility, but comes in the third part of the order,
establishing liberty of conscience according to the instructions given
to her Council of Religion, to raise up her hands to heaven for further
light; in which proceeding she follows that (as was shown in the
preliminaries) of Israel, who, though her national religion was always
a part of her civil law, gave to her prophets the upper hand of all her
orders.

But the surveyors having now done with the parishes, took their leave;
so a parish is the first division of land occasioned by the first
collection of the people of Oceana, whose function proper to that place
is comprised in the six preceding orders.

The next step in the progress of the surveyors was to a meeting of the
nearest of them, as their work lay, by twenties; where conferring their
lists, and computing the deputies contained therein, as the number of
them in parishes, being nearest neighbors, amounted to 100, or as even
as might conveniently be brought with that account, they cast them and
those parishes into the precinct which (be the deputies ever since
more or fewer) is still called the hundred; and to every one of these
precincts they appointed a certain place, being the most convenient town
within the same, for the annual rendezvous; which done, each surveyor,
returning to his hundred, and summoning the deputies contained in his
lists to the rendezvous, they appeared and received--

The seventh order, requiring, “That upon the first Monday next ensuing
the last of January, the deputies of every parish annually assemble
in arms at the rendezvous of the hundred, and there elect out of their
number one justice of the peace, one juryman, one captain, one ensign of
their troop or century, each of these out of the horse; and one juryman,
one coroner, one high constable, out of the foot. The election to be
made by the ballot in this manner. The jurymen for the time being are
to be overseers of the ballot (instead of these, the surveyors are to
officiate at the first assembly), and to look to the performance of
the same according to what was directed in the ballot of the parishes,
saving that the high constable setting forth the urn shall have five
several suits of gold balls, and one dozen of every suit; whereof the
first shall be marked with the letter A, the second with the letter B,
the third with C, the fourth with D, and the fifth with E: and of each
of these suits he shall cast one ball into his hat, or into a little
urn, and shaking the balls together, present them to the first overseer,
who shall draw one, and the suit which is so drawn by the overseer shall
be of use for that day, and no other; for example, if the overseer drew
an A, the high constable shall put seven gold balls marked with the
letter A into the urn, with so many silver ones as shall bring them
even with the number of the deputies, who being sworn, as before, at
the ballot of the parish to make a fair election, shall be called to the
urn; and every man coming in manner as was there shown, shall draw one
ball, which, if it be silver, he shall cast it into a bowl standing at
the foot of the urn, and return to his place: but the first that draws a
gold ball (showing it to the overseers, who if it has not the letter of
the present ballot, have power to apprehend and punish him) is the first
elector, the second the second elector, and so to the seventh; which
order they are to observe in their function. “The electors as they are
drawn shall be placed upon the bench by the overseers, till the whole
number be complete, and then be conducted, with the list of the officers
to be chosen, into a place apart, where, being private, the first
elector shall name a person to the first office in the list; and if the
person so named, being balloted by the rest of the electors, attains
not to the better half of the suffrages in the affirmative, the first
elector shall continue nominating others, till one of them so nominated
by him attains to the plurality of the suffrages in the affirmative, and
be written first competitor to the first office. This done, the second
elector shall observe in his turn the like order; and so the rest of the
electors, naming competitors each to his respective office in the list,
till one competitor be chosen to every office: and when one competitor
is chosen to every office, the first elector shall begin again to name
a second competitor to the first office, and the rest successively shall
name to the rest of the offices till two competitors be chosen to every
office; the like shall be repeated till three competitors be chosen to
every office. And when three competitors are chosen to every office, the
list shall be returned to the overseers, or such as the overseers, in
case they or either of them happened to be electors, have substituted
in his or their place or places; and the overseers or substitutes
having caused the list to be read to the congregation, shall put
the competitors, in order as they are written, to the ballot of the
congregation; and the rest of the proceedings being carried on in
the manner directed in the fifth order, that competitor, of the three
written to each office, who has most of the suffrages above half in the
affirmative, is the officer. The list being after this manner completed,
shall be entered into a register, to be kept at the rendezvous of the
hundred, under inspection of the magistrates of the same, after the
manner following:

Anno Domini


     THE LIST OF THE NEBULOSA

     A.A. Equestrian Order, Justice of the Peace,
     B.B. Equestrian Order, First Juryman,
     C.C. Equestrian Order, Captain of the Hundred,
     D.D. Equestrian Order, Ensign,
     E.E. Second Juryman,
     F.F. High Constable,
     G.G. Coroner,

     Of the hundred of  in the tribe of, which hundred
     consists at this election of 105 deputies.

“The list being entered, the high constable shall take three copies of
the same, whereof he shall presently return one to the lord high sheriff
of the tribe, a second to the lord custos rotulorum, and a third to the
censors; or these, through the want of such magistrates at the first
muster, may be returned to the orator, to be appointed for that tribe.
To the observation of all and every part of this order, the officers and
deputies of the hundred are all and every of them obliged, as they will
answer it to the phylarch, who has power, in case of failure in the
whole or any part, to fine all or any of them so failing at discretion,
or according to such laws as shall hereafter be provided in that case,
but under an appeal to the Parliament.” There is little in this order
worthy of any further account, but that it answers to the rulers
of hundreds in Israel, to the mora or military part of the tribe in
Lacedaemon, and to the century in Rome. The jurymen, being two in a
hundred, and so forty in a tribe, give the latitude allowed by the law
for exceptions. And whereas the golden balls at this ballot begin to be
marked with letters, whereof one is to be drawn immediately before it
begins, this is to the end that the letter being unknown, men may be
frustrated of tricks or foul play, whereas otherwise a man may bring a
golden ball with him, and make as if he had drawn it out of the urn. The
surveyors, when they had taken copies of these lists, had accomplished
their work in the hundreds.

So a hundred is the second division of land occasioned by the second
collection of the people, whose civil and military functions proper to
this place are comprised in the foregoing order.

Having stated the hundreds, they met once again by twenties, where there
was nothing more easy than to cast every twenty hundreds, as they lay
most conveniently together, into one tribe; so the whole territory of
Oceana, consisting of about 10,000 parishes, came to be cast into 1,000
hundreds, and into fifty tribes. In every tribe at the place appointed
for the annual rendezvous of the same, were then, or soon after begun
those buildings which are now called pavilions; each of them standing
with one open side upon fair columns, like the porch of some ancient
temple, and looking into a field capable of the muster of some 4,000
men; before each pavilion stand three pillars sustaining urns for
the ballot, that on the right hand equal in height to the brow of
a horseman, being called the horse urn, that on the left hand, with
bridges on either side to bring it equal in height with the brow of a
footman, being called the foot urn, and the middle urn, with a bridge
on the side toward the foot urn, the other side, as left for the horse,
being without one; and here ended the whole work of the surveyors, who
returned to the Lord Archon with this--


ACCOUNT OF THE CHARGE

   Imprimis: Urns, balls, and balloting-boxes for 10,000 parishes,
   the same being wooden-ware,                     £20,000
   Item: Provision of the like kind for a thousand hundreds

                                        3,000
   Item: Urns and balls of metal, with balloting-boxes for fifty
   tribes,

                                        2,000
   Item: For erecting of fifty pavilions,

                                       60,000
   Item: Wages for four surveyors-general at £1,000 a man

                                        4,000
   Item: Wages for the rest of the surveyors, being 1,000 at £250 a
   man

                                      250,000

               Sum Total             £339,000

This is no great matter of charge for the building of a commonwealth, in
regard that it has cost (which was pleaded by the surveyors) as much
to rig a few ships. Nevertheless that proves not them to be honest,
nor their account to be just; but they had their money for once, though
their reckoning be plainly guilty of a crime, to cost him his neck that
commits it another time, it being impossible for a commonwealth (without
an exact provision that it be not abused in this kind) to subsist; for
if no regard should be had of the charge (though that may go deep), yet
the debauchery and corruption whereto, by negligence in accounts, it
infallibly exposes its citizens, and thereby lessens the public faith,
which is the nerve and ligament of government, ought to be prevented.
But the surveyors being despatched, the Lord Archon was very curious in
giving names to his tribes, which having caused to be written in scrolls
cast into an urn, and presented to the councillors, each of them drew
one, and was accordingly sent to the tribe in his lot, as orators of
the same, a magistracy no otherwise instituted, than for once and pro
tempore, to the end that the council upon so great an occasion might
both congratulate with the tribes, and assist at the first muster in
some things of necessity to be differently carried from the established
administration and future course of the commonwealth.

The orators being arrived, every one as soon as might be, at the
rendezvous of his tribe, gave notice to the hundreds, and summoned the
muster which appeared for the most part upon good horses, and already
indifferently well armed; as to instance in one for all, the tribe of
Nubia, where Hermes de Caduceo, lord orator of the same, after a short
salutation and a hearty welcome, applied himself to his business, which
began with--

The eighth order requiring “That the lord high sheriff as
commander-in-chief, and the lord custos rotulorum as muster-master of
the tribe (or the orator for the first muster), upon reception of the
lists of their hundreds, returned to them by the high constables of the
same, presently cause them to be cast up, dividing the horse from
the foot, and listing the horse by their names in troops, each troop
containing about 100 in number, to be inscribed First, Second, or Third
troop, etc., according to the order agreed upon by the said magistrates;
which done, they shall list the foot in like manner, and inscribe the
companies in like order. These lists upon the eve of the muster shall
be delivered to certain trumpeters and drummers, whereof there shall
be fifteen of each sort (as well for the present as otherwise to be
hereafter mentioned) stipendiated by the tribe. And the trumpeters and
drummers shall be in the field before the pavilion, upon the day of the
muster, so soon as it is light, where they shall stand every one with
his list in his hand, at a due distance, placed according to the order
of the list, the trumpeters with the lists of the horse on the right
hand, and the drummers with the lists of the foot on the left hand;
where having sounded awhile, each of them shall begin to call and
continue calling the names of the deputies, as they come into the field,
till both the horse and foot be gathered by that means into their due
order. The horse and foot being in order, the lord lieutenant of the
tribe shall cast so many gold balls marked with the figures 1, 2, 3, 4,
etc., as there be troops of horse in the field, together with so many
silver balls as there be companies, marked in the same manner, into
a little urn, to which he shall call the captains; and the captains
drawing the gold balls shall command the horse, and those that draw the
silver the foot, each in the order of his lot. The like shall be done by
the conductor at the same time for the ensigns at another urn; and they
that draw the gold balls shall be cornets, the left ensigns.”

This order may puzzle the reader, but tends to a wonderful speed of the
muster, to which it would be a great matter to lose a day in ranging
and marshalling, whereas by virtue of this the tribe is no sooner in the
field than in battalia, nor sooner in battalia than called to the urns
or the ballot by virtue of--

The ninth order, “Whereby the censors (or the orator for the first
muster) upon reception of the lists of the hundreds from the high
constables, according as is directed by the seventh order are to make
their notes for the urns beforehand, with regard had to the lists of the
magistrates, to be elected by the ensuing orders, that is to say, by the
first list called the prime magnitude, six; and by the second called the
galaxy, nine. Wherefore the censors are to put into the middle urn for
the election of the first list twenty-four gold balls, with twenty-six
blanks or silver balls, in all sixty; and into the side urns sixty gold
balls, divided into each according to the different number of the horse
and foot; that is to say, if the horse and the foot be equal, equally,
and if the horse and the foot be unequal, unequally, by an arithmetical
proportion. The like shall be done the second day of the muster for
the second list, except that the censors shall put into the middle urn
thirty-six gold balls with twenty-four blanks, in all sixty; and sixty
gold balls into the side urns, divided respectively into the number of
the horse and the foot; and the gold balls in the side urns at either
ballot are by the addition of blanks to be brought even with the
number of the ballotants at either urn respectively. The censors having
prepared their notes, as has been shown, and being come at the day
appointed into the field, shall present a little urn to the lord high
sheriff, who is to draw twice for the letters to be used that day,
the one at the side urns, and the other at the middle. And the censors
having fitted the urns accordingly, shall place themselves in certain
movable seats or pulpits (to be kept for that use in the pavilion) the
first censor before the horse urn, the second before the foot urn, the
lord lieutenant doing the office of censor pro tempore at the middle
urn; where all and every one of them shall cause the laws of the ballot
to be diligently observed, taking a special care that no man be suffered
to come above once to the urn (whereof it more particularly concerns
the sub-censors, that is to say, the overseers of every parish, to be
careful, they being each in this regard responsible for their respective
parishes) or to draw above one ball, which if it be gold, he is to
present to the censor, who shall look upon the letter; and if it be not
that of the day, and of the respective urn, apprehend the party, who for
this or any other like disorder is obnoxious to the phylarch.”

This order being observed by the censors, it is not possible for the
people, if they can but draw the balls, though they understand nothing
at all of the ballot, to be out. To philosophize further upon this art,
though there be nothing more rational, were not worth the while, because
in writing it will be perplexed, and the first practice of it gives
the demonstration; whence it came to pass that the orator, after some
needless pains in the explanation of the two foregoing orders, betaking
himself to exemplify the same, found the work done to his hand, for the
tribe, as eager upon a business of this nature, had retained one of
the surveyors, out of whom (before the orator arrived) they had got the
whole mystery by a stolen muster, at which in order to the ballot they
had made certain magistrates pro tempore. Wherefore he found not only
the pavilion (for this time a tent) erected with three posts, supplying
the place of pillars to the urns, but the urns being prepared with a
just n

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