OCEANA

By James Harrington

Contents

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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.

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OCEANA

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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.

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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.

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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 number of balls for the first ballot, to become the field, and the occasion very gallantly with their covers made in the manner of helmets, open at either ear to give passage to the hands of the ballotants, and slanting with noble plumes to direct the march of the people.

Wherefore he proceeded to—

The tenth order, “Requiring of the deputies of the parishes, that upon every Monday next ensuing the last of February, they make their personal appearance, horse and foot in arms accordingly, at the rendezvous of the tribe, where, being in discipline, the horse upon the right, and the foot upon the left, before the pavilion, and having made oath by holding up their hands, upon the tender of it by the lord high sheriff, to make election without favor, and of such only as they shall judge fittest for the commonwealth, the conductor shill take three balls, the one inscribed with these words (outward files), another with these words (inward files), and the third with these (middle files), which balls he shall cast into a little urn, and present it to the lord high sheriff, who, drawing one, shall give the words of command, as they are thereupon inscribed, and the ballot shall begin accordingly. For example, if the ball be inscribed ‘Middle files,’ the ballot shall begin by the middle; that is, the two files that are middle to the horse shall draw out first to the horse urn, and the two files that are middle to the foot shall draw out first to the foot urn, and be followed by all the rest of the files as they are next to them in order. The like shall be done by the inward, or by the outward files in case they be first called. And the files, as every man has drawn his ball, if it be silver, shall behind at the urn to countermarch to their places, but he that has drawn a gold ball at a side urn shall proceed to the middle urn, where if the balls he draws be silver he shall also countermarch, but if it be gold he shall take his place upon a form set across the pavilion, with his face toward the lord high sheriff, who shall be seated in the middle of the pavilion, with certain clerks by him, one of which shall write down the names of every elector, that is, of every one that drew a gold ball at the middle urn, and in the order his ball was drawn, till the electors amount to six in number. And the first six electors, horse and foot promiscuously, are the first order of electors; the second six (still accounting them as they are drawn) the second order, the third six the third order, and the fourth six the fourth order of electors; every elector having place in his order, according to the order wherein he was drawn. But so soon as the first order of electors is complete, the lord high sheriff shall send them with a copy of the following list, and a clerk that understands the ballot, immediately to a little tent standing before the pavilion in his eye, to which no other person but themselves, during the election, shall approach. The list shall be written in this manner:”

Anno Domini

THE LIST OF THE PRIME MAGNITUDE, OR FIRST DAY’S ELECTION OF
MAGISTRATES
1. The Lord High Sheriff, Commander-in-Chief,
2. Lord Lieutenant,
3. Lord Custos Rotulorum, Muster-Master-General,
4. The Conductor, being Quarter-master General,
5. The First Censor,
6. The Second Censor,
Of the tribe of Nubia, containing at the present muster 700 horse
and 1,500 foot, in all 22,000 deputies.

“And the electors of the first band or order, being six, shall each of them name to his respective magistracy in the left such as are not already elected in the hundreds, till one competitor be chosen to every magistracy in the list by the ballot of the electors of the first order, which done, the list with the competitors thereunto annexed shall be returned to the lord high sheriff by the clerk attending that order, but the electors shall keep their places; for they have already given their suffrage, and may not enter into the ballot of the tribe. If there arises any dispute in an order of electors, one of the censors or sub-censors appointed by them in case they be electors, shall enter into the tent of that order, and that order shall stand to his judgment in the decision of the controversy. The like shall be done exactly by each other order of electors, being sent as they are drawn, each with another copy of the same list, into a distinct tent, till there be returned to the lord high sheriff four competitors to every magistracy in the list; that is to say, one competitor elected to every office in every one of the four orders, which competitors the lord high sheriff shall cause to be pronounced or read by a crier to the congregation, and the congregation having heard the whole lists repeated, the names shall be put by the lord high sheriff to the tribe, one by one, beginning with the first competitor in the first order, thence proceeding to the first competitor in the second order, and so to the first in the third and fourth orders. And the suffrages being taken in boxes by boys (as has been already shown) shall be poured into the bowls standing before the censors, who shall be seated at each end of the table in the pavilion, the one numbering the affirmatives and the other the negatives, and he of the four competitors to the first magistracy that has most above half the suffrages of the tribe in the affirmative, is the first magistrate. The like is to be done successively by the rest of the competitors in their order. But because soon after the boxes are sent out for the first name, there be others sent out for the second, and so for the third, etc., by which means divers names are successively at one and the same time in balloting; the boy that carries a box shall sing or repeat continually the name of the competitor for whom that box is carrying, with that also of the magistracy to which he is proposed. A magistrate of the tribe happening to be an elector, may substitute any one of his own order to execute his other function. The magistrates of the prime magnitude being thus elected, shall receive the present charge of the tribe.”

If it be objected against this order that the magistrates to be elected by it will be men of more inferior rank than those of the hundreds, in regard that those are chosen first, it may be remembered that so were the burgesses in the former government, nevertheless the knights of the shire were men of greater quality; and the election at the hundred is made by a council of electors, of whom less cannot be expected than the discretion of naming persons fittest for those capacities, with an eye upon these to be elected at the tribe. As for what may be objected in point of difficulty, it is demonstrable by the foregoing orders, that a man might bring 10,000 men, if there were occasion, with as much ease, and as suddenly to perform the ballot, as he can make 5,000 men, drawing them out by double files, to march a quarter of a mile. But because at this ballot, to go up and down the field, distributing the linen pellets to every man, with which he is to ballot or give suffrage, would lose a great deal of time, therefore a man’s wife, his daughters, or others, make him his provision of pellets before the ballot, and he comes into the field with a matter of a score of them in his pocket. And now I have as good as done with the sport. The next is—

The eleventh order, “Explaining the duties and functions of the magistrates contained in the list of the prime magnitude, and those of the hundreds, beginning with the lord high sheriff, who, over and above his more ancient offices, and those added by the former order, is the first magistrate of the phylarch, or prerogative troop. The lord lieutenant, over and above his duty mentioned, is commander-in-chief of the musters of the youth, and second magistrate of the phylarch. The custos rotulorum is to return the yearly muster-rolls of the tribe, as well that of the youth as of the elders, to the rolls in emporium, and is the third magistrate of the phylarch. The censors by themselves and their sub-censors, that is, the overseers of the parishes, are to see that the respective laws of the ballot be observed in all the popular assemblies of the tribe. They have power also to put such national ministers, as in preaching shall intermeddle with matters of government, out of their livings, except the party appeals to the phylarch, or to the Council of Religion, where in that case the censors shall prosecute. All and every one of these magistrates, together with the justices of peace, and the jurymen of the hundreds, amounting in the whole number to threescore and six, are the prerogative troop or phylarch of the tribe.

“The function of the phylarch or prerogative troop is fivefold:

“First, they are the council of the tribe, and as such to govern the musters of the same according to the foregoing orders, having cognizance of what has passed in the congregation or elections made in the parishes or the hundreds, with power to punish any undue practices, or variation from their respective rules and orders, under an appeal to the Parliament. A marriage legitimately is to be pronounced by the parochial congregation, the muster of the hundred, or the phylarch. And if a tribe have a desire (which they are to express at the muster by their captains, every troop by his own) to petition the Parliament the phylarch, as the council, shall frame the petition in the pavilion, and propose it by clauses to the ballot of the whole tribe; and the clauses that shall be affirmed by the ballot of the tribe, and signed by the hands of the six magistrates of the prime magnitude, shall be received and esteemed by the Parliament as the petition of the tribe, and no other.

“Secondly, the phylarch has power to call to their assistance what other troops of the tribe they please (he they elders or youth, whose discipline will be hereafter directed), and with these to receive the judges itinerant in their circuits, whom the magistrates of the phylarch shall assist upon the bench, and the juries elsewhere in their proper functions according to the more ancient laws and customs of this nation.

“Thirdly, the phylarch shall hold the court called the quartersessions according to the ancient custom, and therein shall also hear causes in order to the protection of liberty of conscience, by such rules as are or shall hereafter be appointed by the Parliament.

“Fourthly, all commissions issued into the tribes by the Parliament, or by the chancery, are to be directed to the phylarch, or some of that troop, and executed by the same respectively.

“Fifthly, in the case of levies of money the Parliament shall tax the phylarchs, the phylarchs shall tax the hundreds, the hundreds the parishes, and the parishes shall levy it upon themselves. The parishes having levied the tax-money accordingly, shall return it to the officers of the hundreds, the hundred to the phylarchs, and the phylarchs to the Exchequer. But if a man has ten children living, he shall pay no taxes; if he has five living, he shall pay but half taxes; if he has been married three years, or be above twenty-five years of age, and has no child or children lawfully begotten, he shall pay double taxes. And if there happen to grow any dispute upon these or such other orders as shall or may hereto be added hereafter, the phylarchs shall judge the tribes, and the Parliament shall judge the phylarchs. For the rest, if any man shall go about to introduce the right or power of debate into any popular council or congregation of this nation, the phylarch or any magistrate of the hundred, or of the tribe, shall cause him presently to be sent in custody to the Council of War.”

The part of the order relating to the rolls in Emporium being of singular use, is not unworthy to be somewhat better opened. In what manner the lists of the parishes, hundreds, and tribes are made, has been shown in their respective orders, where, after the parties are elected, they give an account of the whole number of the elders or deputies in their respective assemblies or musters; the like for this part exactly is done by the youth in their discipline (to be hereafter shown) wherefore the lists of the parishes, youth and elders, being summed up, give the whole number of the people able to bear arms, and the lists of the tribes, youth and elders, being summed up, give the whole number of the people bearing arms. This account, being annually recorded by the master of the rolls, is called the “Pillar of Nilus,” because the people, being the riches of the commonwealth, as they are found to rise or fall by the degrees of this pillar, like that river, give an account of the public harvest.

Thus much for the description of the first day’s work at the muster, which happened (as has been shown) to be done as soon as said; for as in practice it is of small difficulty, so requires it not much time, seeing the great Council of Venice, consisting of a like number, begins at twelve of the clock, and elects nine magistrates in one afternoon. But the tribe being dismissed for this night, repaired to their quarters, under the conduct of their new magistrates. The next morning returning to the field very early, the orator proceeded to—

The twelfth order, “Directing the muster of the tribe in the second day’s election, being that of the list called the galaxy; in which the censors shall prepare the urns according to the directions given in the ninth order for the second ballot; that is to say, with thirty-six gold balls in the middle urn, making four orders, and nine electors in every order, according to the number of the magistrates in the list of the galaxy, which is as follows:

1. Knight 2. Knight

To be chosen out of the horse. 3. Deputy 4. Deputy 5. Deputy

To be chosen out of the horse. 6. Deputy 7. Deputy 8. Deputy 9. Deputy

To be chosen out of the foot.

“The rest of the ballot shall proceed exactly according to that of the first day. But, forasmuch as the commonwealth demands as well the fruits of a man’s body as of his mind, he that has not been married shall not be capable of these magistracies till he be married. If a deputy already chosen to be an officer in the parish, in the hundred, or in the tribe, be afterward chosen of the galaxy, it shall be lawful for him to delegate his office in the parish, in the hundred, or in the tribe, to any one of his own order being not already chosen into office. The knights and deputies being chosen, shall be brought to the head of the tribe by the lord high sheriff, who shall administer to them this oath: ‘Ye shall well and truly observe and keep the orders and customs of this commonwealth which the people have chosen.’ And if any of them shall refuse the oath, he shall be rejected, and that competitor which had the most voices next shall be called in his place, who, if he takes the oath, shall be entered in the list; but if he also refuses the oath, he who had most voices next shall be called, and so till the number of nine out of those competitors which had most voices be sworn knights and deputies of the galaxy. (This clause, in regard to the late divisions, and to the end that no violence be offered to any man’s conscience, to be of force but for the first three years only.) The knights of the galaxy being elected and sworn, are to repair, by the Monday next ensuing to the last of March, to the Pantheon or palace of justice, situated in the metropolis of this commonwealth (except the Parliament, by reason of a contagious sickness, or some other occasion, has adjourned to another part of the nation), where they are to take their places in the Senate, and continue in full power and commission as senators for the full term of three years next ensuing the date of their election. The deputies of the galaxy are to repair by the same day (except as before excepted) to the halo situated in Emporium, where they are to be listed of the prerogative tribe, or equal representative of the people; and to continue in full power and commission as their deputies for the full term of three years next ensuing their election. But, forasmuch as the term of every magistracy or office in this commonwealth requires an equal vacation, a knight or deputy of the galaxy, having fulfilled his term of three years, shall not be re-elected into the same galaxy or any other, till he has also fulfilled his three years’ vacation.”

Whoever shall rightly consider the foregoing orders, will be as little able to find how it is possible that a worshipful knight should declare himself in ale and beef worthy to serve his country, as how my lord high sheriff’s honor, in case he were protected from the law, could play the knave. But though the foregoing orders, so far as they regard the constitution of the Senate and the people, requiring no more as to an ordinary election than is therein explained, that is but one-third part of their knights and deputies, are perfect; yet must we in this place, and as to the institution, of necessity erect a scaffold. For the commonwealth to the first creation of her councils in full number, required thrice as many as are eligible by the foregoing orders. Wherefore the orator whose aid in this place was most necessary, rightly informing the people of the reason, stayed them two days longer at the muster, and took this course. One list, containing two knights and seven deputies, he caused to be chosen upon the second day; which list being called the first galaxy, qualified the parties elected of it with power for the term of one year, and no longer: another list, containing two knights and seven deputies more, he caused to be chosen the third day, which list being called the second galaxy, qualified the parties elected of it with power for the term of two years, and no longer. And upon the fourth day he chose the third galaxy, according as it is directed by the order, empowered for three years; which lists successively falling (like the signs or constellations of one hemisphere, which setting, cause those of the other to rise) cast the great orbs of this commonwealth into an annual, triennial, and perpetual revolution.