of a Common-wealth of this nature only for though it have been given unto all kinds to drive at it inasmuch as that of Athens or Lacedemon if the one had not hung in the others light might have gained it yet could neither of them have held it not Athens through the manner of her propagation which being by down-right Tyranny could not preserve what shee had nor Lacedemon because shee was overthrown by the weight of a less Conquest The facility then of this great Enterprize being peculiar unto that popular Government I shall consider it First In gaining And secondly In holding For the former Volenti non fit injuria it is said of the people under Eumenes that they would not have changed their subjection for liberty wherefore the Romans gave them no disturbance If a people be contented with their Government it is a certain sign that it is good and much good do them with it The sword of the Magistracy is for a terror unto them that do evil Eumenes had the fear of God or of the Romans before his eyes concerning such hee hath given you no Commission But till wee can say here are the Romans where is Eumenes Do not think that the late appearances of God unto you have been altogether for your selves he hath surely seen the affliction of your Brethren and heard their cry by reason of their task-masters For to believe otherwise is not only to be mindlesse of his wayes but altogether deaf If you have ears to hear this is the way in which you will assuredly bee called upon for if while there is no Stock of Liberty no sanctuary of the afflicted it bee a common object to behold a people casting themselves out of the pan of one Prince into the fire of another what can you think but if the world should see the Roman Eagle again shee would renew her age and her flight nor ever did shee spread her wing with better Omen then will be read in your Ensigns which if called in by an oppressed people they interpose between them and their Yoak the people themselves must either do nothing in the mean time or have no more pains to take for their wished fruit than to gather it if that bee not done for them Wherefore this must needs bee easy and yet you have a greater facility than is in the arm of flesh for if the cause of mankind bee the cause of God the Lord of Hosts will bee your Captain and you shall bee a praise unto the Earth The facility of holding is in the way of your Propagation if you take that of Athens and Lacedemon you shall rain snares but either catch or hold nothing Lying lips are an abomination unto the Lord if setting up for liberty you impose yoaks hee will assuredly destroy you On the other side to go about a work of this nature by a League without an head is to abdicate that Magistracy wherewithall hee hath not only indued you but whereof hee will require an account of you for cursed is hee that doth the work of the Lord negligently Wherefore you are to take the course of Rome if you have subdued a Nation that is capable of liberty you shall make them a present of it as did Flaminius unto Greece and Aemilius unto Macedon reserving unto your selves some part of that revenue which was legally paid unto the former Government together with the right of being head of the League which includeth such Levyes of men and mony as shall bee necessary for the carrying on of the publick work for if a people have by your means attained unto freedom they owe both unto the cause and you such aid as may propagate the like fruit unto the rest of the world But whereas every Nation is not capable of her liberty unto this degree lest you be put to doing and undoing of things as the Romans were in Macedon you shall diligently observe what Nation is fit for her liberty unto this degree and what not which is to be done by two marks the first if shee bee willing to help the Lord against the mighty for if shee have no care of the Liberty of mankind shee deserveth not her own but because in this you may be deceived by pretences which continuing for a while specious may afterwards vanish the other is more certain and that is if shee bee capable of an equal Agrarian which that it was not observed by excellent Aemilius in his Donation of Liberty and introduction of a Popular State among the Macedonians I am more then moved to believe for two reasons the first because at the same time the Agrarian was odious unto the Roman Patricians the second that the Pseudo-Phillip could afterwards so easily recover Macedon which could not have happened but by the Nobility and their impatience having great estates to bee equalled with the people for that the people should otherwise at the meer sound of a name have thrown away their liberty is incredible Wherefore bee assured that the Nation where you cannot establish an equal Agrarian is incapable of her liberty as to this kinde of Donation For example except the Aristocracy in Marpesia bee dissolved neither can that people have their liberty there nor you govern at home for they continuing still liable to bee sold by their Lords unto forrain Princes there will never especially in a Country of which there is no other profit to be made bee want of such Merchants and drovers while you must be the market where they are to receive their second payment Nor can the Aristocracy there be dissolved but by your means in relation whereunto you are provided with your Provincial Orb which being proportioned unto the measure of the Nation that you have vindicated or conquered will easily hold it for there is not a people in the world more difficult to be held than the Marpesians which though by themselves it be given unto their own nature is truly to be attributed unto that of their Country Nevertheless you having nine thousand men upon the continual guard of it that threatned by any sudden insurrection have places of retreat and an Army of forty thousand men upon a dayes warning ready to march unto their rescue it is not to be rationally shewn which way they can possibly slip out of your hands and if a man shall think that upon a Province more remote and divided by Sea you have not the like hold he hath not so well considered your wings as your talons your shipping being of such nature as maketh the descent of your Armies almost of equal facility in any Country so that what you take you hold both because your Militia being already populous will bee of great growth in it self and through the confederates by whom in taking and holding you are still more inabled to take and hold Nor shall you easilier hold then the people under your Empire or Patronage be held My Lords I would not go unto
the Result but is the Supream Judicature and the ultimate Appeal in this Common-wealth For the Popular Government that makes account to be of any standing must make sure in the first place of the Appeal unto the People Ante omnes de provocatione adversus Magistratus ad Populum sacrandoque cum bonis capite ejus qui regni occupandi concilia inesset As an Estate in trust becomes a mans own if he be not answerable for it so the Power of a Magistracy not accomptable unto the People from whom it was received becoming of private use the Common-wealth loses her Liberty Wherefore the right of Supream Judicature in the People without which there can be no such thing as Popular Government is confirmed by the constant Practice of all Common-wealths as that of Israel in the Cases of Achan and of the Tribe of Benjamin adjudged by the Congregation The Dicasterion or Court called the Heliaia in Athens which the Comitia of that Common-wealth consisting of the whole People and so being too numerous to be a Judicatory was constituted sometimes of Five hundred at others of One thousand or according to the greatnesse of the Cause of Fifteen hundred elected by the Lot out of the whole body of the People had with the nine Archons that were Presidents the Cognizance of such Causes as were of highest importance in that State The Five Ephors in Lacedemon which were Popular Magistrates might question their Kings as appears by the Cases of Pausanias and of Agis who being upon his Tryall in this Court was cryed unto by his Mother to appeal unto the People as Plutarch hath it in his Life The Tribunes of the People of Rome like in the nature of their Magistracy and for sometime in number unto the Ephors as being according unto Halicarnasseus and Plutarch instituted in imitation of them had power diem dicere to Summon any Man his Magistracy at least being expired for from the Dictator there lay no Appeal to answer for himself unto the People As in the case of Coriolanus which was going about to force the People by withholding Corn from them in a famine to relinquish the Magistracy of the Tribunes In that of Sp. Cassius for affecting Tyranny Of M. Sergius for running away at Veii Of C. Lucretius for spoyling his Province Of Junius Silanus for making War against the Cimberi in jussu Populi with divers others And the Crimes of this nature were call'd Laesae Majestatis Examples of such as were arraigned or tryed for Peculate or Defraudation of the Common-wealth were M. Curius for intercepting the money of the Samnites Salinator for the unequal division of Spoyles unto his Souldiers M. Posthumius for Cheating the Common-wealth by a feigned Shipwrack Causes of these two kinds were of more Publique nature but the like Power upon Appeals was also exercised by the People in private Matters even during the time of the Kings As in the Case of Horatius Nor is it otherwise with Venice where Doge Loridano was Sentenced by the great Council and Antonio Grimani afterwards Doge questioned for that he being Admiral had suffered the Turk to take Lepanto in view of his Fleet. Neverthelesse there lay no Appeal from the Roman Dictator unto the People which if there had might have cost the Common-wealth dear when Sp. Moelius affecting Empire circumvented and debauched the Tribunes whereupon T. Quintius Cinninatus was created Dictator Who having chosen Servilius Alaha to be his Lievtenant or Magister Equitum sent him to apprehend Moelius whom while he disputed the Commands of the Dictator and implored the ayd of the People Alaha cut off upon the place By which example you may see in what cases the Dictator may prevent the blow which is ready sometimes to fall ere the People be aware of the danger Wherefore there lyes no Appeal from the Dieii in Venice unto the Great Council nor from our Council of War to the People For the way of proceeding of this Tribe or the Ballot it is as was once said for all Venetian This Discourse de Judiciis whereupon we are fallen bringeth us rather naturally then of design from the two general Orders of every Common-wealth that is to say from the Debating part or the Senate and the Resolving part or the People to the third which is the Executive part or the Magistracy whereupon I shall have no need to dwell For the Executive Magistrates of this Common-wealth are the Strategus in Arms the Signory in their several Courts as the Chancery the Exchequer as also the Councils in divers Cases within their Instructions the Censors as well in their proper Magistracy as in the Council of Religion the Tribunes in the Government of the Prerogative and that Judicatory And the Judges with their Courts Of all which so much is already said or known as may suffice The Tuesday-Lectures or Orations unto the People will be of great benefit unto the Senate the Prerogative and the whole Nation Unto the Senate because they will not only teach your Senators Elocution but keep the Systeme of the Government in their memories Elocution is of great use unto your Senators for if they do not understand Rhetorick giving it at this time for granted that the Art were not otherwise good and come to treat with or vindicate the cause of the Common-wealth against some other Nation that is good at it the advantage will be subject to remain upon the merit of the Art and not upon the merit of the Cause Furthermore the Genius or Soul of this Government being in the whole and in every part they will never be of ability in determination upon any particular unlesse at the same time they have an Idea of the whole That this therefore must be in that regard of equal benefit unto the Prerogative is plain though these have a greater concernment in it For this Common-wealth is the Estate of the People and a man you know though he be virtuous yet if he do not understand his Estate may run out or be cheated of it Last of all the treasures of the Politicks will by this means be so opened rifled and dispersed that this Nation will as soon dote like the Indians upon glasse Beads as disturb your Government with whimsies and freaks of mother-wit or suffer themselves to be stutter'd out of their Liberties There is not any reason why your Grandees your wise men of this Age that laugh out and openly at a Common-wealth as the most ridiculous thing do not appear to be as in this regard they are meer Ideots but that the People have not Eyes There remaineth no more appertaining unto the Senate and the People than order 24 The Twenty fourth Order Whereby it is lawfull for the Province of Marpesia to have 30. Knights of their own election continually present in the Senate of Oceana together with 60. Deputies of Horse and 120. of Foot in the Prerogative Tribe indued with equall power respect
cannot have being otherwise as it were upon the wing Neverthelesse in such Cities as subsist most by Trade and have little or no Land as Holland and Genoa the ballance of Treasure may be equal unto that of Land in the cases mentioned But Leviathan though he seem to scew at Antiquity following his furious Master Carneades hath caught hold of the publick sword unto which he reduceth all manner and matter of Government as where he affirms this opinion that any Monarch receiveth his power by Covenant that is to say upon conditions to proceed from the not understanding the easie 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 publick 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 an hand it is but cold iron The hand which holdeth 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 hath a great belly and must be fed wherefore this will come unto what pastures you have and what pastures you have will come unto the ballance of propriety without which the publick sword is but a name or meer spit-frog Wherefore to set that which Leviathan saith of Arms and of Contracts a little streighter he that can graze this beast with the great belly as the Turk doth his Timariots may well deride him that imagines he received his power by covenant or is obliged unto any such toy it being in this case onely that covenants are but words and breath But if the propriety of the Nobility stocked with their Tenants and retainers be the pasture of that beast the Ox knowes his Masters Crib and it is impossible for a King in such a constitution to raign otherwise then by Covenant or if he break it it is words that comes to blowes But sairh he when an Assembly of men is made Soveraign then no man imagineth any such Covenant to have past in the Institution but what was that by Publicola of appeal unto the people or that whereby the people had their Tribunes Fy saith he No body is so dull as to say that the People of Rome made a Covenant with the Romans to hold the Soveraignty on such or such conditions which not performed the Romans might depose the Roman people In which there be remarkable things for first he holdeth the Common-wealth 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 Soveraign whereas the people who onely were Soveraign were such from the beginning as appears by the ancient style of their Covenants or Laws censuere Patres jussit Populus That a Councill being made Soveraign cannot be made such upon conditions whereas the Decemviri being a Council that was made Soveraign was made such upon conditions That all conditions or covenants making a Soveraign the Soveraign being made are void whence it must follow that the Decemvirs being made were ever after the lawful Government of Rome and that it was unlawful for the Common-wealth of Rome to depose the Decemvirs as also that Cicero if he writ otherwise out of his Common-wealth did not write out of Nature But to come unto others that see more of this ballance You have Aristotle full of it in divers places especially where he saith that Immoderate Wealth as where One man or the Few have greater possessions than equality or the frame of the Common-wealth will bear is an occasion of Sedition which ends for the greater part in Monarchy and that for this cause the Ostracisme hath been received in divers places as in Argos and Athens But that it were better to prevent the growth in the beginning then when it hath gotten head to seek the remedy of such an evil Machiavill hath missed it very narrowly and more dangerously for not fully perceiving that if a Common-wealth be galled by the Gentry it is by their overballance he speaks of the Gentry as hostile to popular Governments and of popular Governments as hostile unto 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 unlesse in civill Warr seeing that even in Switz the Gentry are not onely safe but in honour But the ballance as I have laid it down though unseen by Machiavill is that which interpreteth him and that which he confirmeth by his Judgment in many other as well as in this place where he concludes That he who will go about to make a Common-Wealth where there be many Gentlemen unlesse he first destroy 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 passe unlesse 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 amongst the rest and bring in the rest unto 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 Machiavill that a Nobility or Gentry overballancing a popular Government is the utter bane and destruction of it so I shall shew in another that a Nobility or Gentry in a popular Government not overballancing it is the very life and soul of it By what hath been said it should seem that we may lay aside farther disputes of the publick 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 overballance in dominion nor if otherwise stated by the Law or Custome as in the Common-wealth of Rome Consules sine lège Curiata rem militarem attingere non potuerunt where the people having the sword the Nobility came to have the overballance availeth it unto other end than destruction for as a building swaying from the foundation must fall so the Law swaying from reason and the Militia from the ballance of Dominion And so much for the ballance of Nationall or Domestick Empire which is in Dominion The ballance of Forraign or Provincial Empire is of a contrary nature A man may as well say that it is unlawfull for him who hath made a fair and honest purchase to have tenants as for a Government that hath made a just progresse and inlargement of it self to have Provinces But how a Province may be justly acquired
appear Where he grants the great prosperity of ancient Common-wealths which is to give up the controversie 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 the best education without the best Lawes or the best Lawes any otherwise then by the excellency of their policy But if some of these Common-Wealths as being lesse perfect in their policy then others have been more seditious it is not more an argument of the infirmity of this or that Common-wealth in particular then of the excellency of that kind of Policy in generall which if they that have not altogether reached have neverthelesse had greater prosperity what would befall them that should reach In answer to which question let me invite Leviathan who of all other Governments giveth the advantage unto Monarchy for perfection to a better disquisition of it by these three assertions The first That the perfection of Government lyeth 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 reacheth not unto the perfection of Government but must have some dangerous flaw in it The third That Popular Government reaching the perfection of the kind reacheth the perfection of Government and hath no flaw in it The first assertion requireth no proof For the proof of the second Monarchy as hath been shewn 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 Gothes 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 expresly said by the Authors that mention them that the Kings were but the Captains and that the people not onely gave them Lawes 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 flawes in them then any other But for a Monarchy by Arms as that of the Turk which of all models that ever were cometh up unto 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 Turky is no perfect Government And for a Monarchy by a 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 perpetuall power by their retainers and tenants to raise sedition and whereas the Janizaries occasion this kind of calamity no sooner then they make an end of it to levy a lasting War unto the vast effusion of blood and that even upon occasions wherein the people but for their dependance upon their Lords had no concernment as in the Fewd of the Red and White The like hath 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 yieldeth it unto me that there is no other Common-wealth 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 then Leviathan hath said or ever will be able to say for Monarchy as 1. That it is the Government that was never conquered by any Monarch from the beginning of the World unto this day for if the Common-wealth of Greece came under the yoke of the Kings of Macedon they were first broken by themselves 2. That it is the Government that hath frequently led mighty Monarchs in Triumph 3. That it is the Government which if it have been Seditious it hath not been from any imperfection in the kind but in the particular constitution which where ever the like hath happened must have been unequall 4. That it is the Government which if it have been any thing near equall was never seditious or let him shew me what sedition hath happened in Lacedemon or Venice 5. That it is the Government which attaining unto perfect equality hath such a libration in the frame of it that no man living can shew which way any man or men in or under it can contract any such interest or power as should be able to disturb the Common-wealth with sedition wherefore an equal Common-wealth is that onely which is without flaw and containeth in it the full perfection of Government But to return By what hath been shewn in reason and experience it may appear that though Common-Wealths in generall 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 ballance or capacity of them according unto which they are of divers kinds The first division of them is into such as are single as Israel Athens Laecedemon c. and such as are by leagues as those of the Achaeans Aetolians Lyceans Switz and Hollanders The second being Machiavil's is into such as are for preservation as Lacedemon and Venice and such as are for encrease as Athens and Rome in which I can see no more then that the former taketh in no more Citizens then are necessary for defence and the latter so many as are capable of encrease The third division unseen hitherto is into equall and unequall and this is the main point especially as to domestick peace and tranquillity for to make a Common-wealth unequall is to divide it into parties which setteth them at perpetuall variance the one party endeavouring to preserve their eminence and inequality and the other to attain unto equality whence the people of Rome derived their perpetuall strife with the Nobility or Senate but in an equal Common-wealth there can be no more strife then there can be over-ballance in equall weights wherefore the Common-wealth of Venice being that which of all others is the most equal in the constitution is that wherein there never happen'd any strife between the Senate and the people An equall Common-wealth is such an one as is equall both in the ballance and foundation and in the superstructions that is to say in her Agrarian Law and in her Rotation An equal Agrarian is a
or never well turned or constituted except it have been the work of one man for which cause a wise Legislator and one whose mind is firmely set not upon private but the publick interest not upon his posterity but upon his Country may justly endeavour to get the soveraigne power into his own hands nor shall any man that is master of reason blame such extraordinary meanes as in that case shall be necessary the end proving no other than the constitution of a well ordered Common-wealth The reason of this is demonstrable for the ordinary meanes not failing the Common-wealth hath no need of a Legislator but the ordinary meanes failing there is no recourse to be had but to such as are extraordinary And whereas a Book or a Building hath not been known to attaine to perfection if it have not had a sole Author or Architect a Common-wealth as to the Fabrick of it is of the like nature And thus it may be made at once in which there be great advantages for a Common-wealth made at once taketh her Security at the same time she lendeth her Money trusteth not her selfe to the faith of men but lancheth immediately forth into the Empire of Lawes and being set streight bringeth the manners of her Citizens unto her rule whence followed that uprightnesse which was in Lacedemon But manners that are rooted in men bow the tendernesse of a Common-wealth coming up by twigs unto their bent whence followed the obliquity that was in Rome and those perpetuall repaires by the Consuls Axes and Tribunes Hammers which could never finish that Common-wealth but in destruction My Lord Generall being clear in these points and the necessity of some other course than would be thought upon by the Parliament appointed a Randezvous of the Army where he spoke his sense agreeable to these Preliminaries with such successe unto the Souldiery that the Parliament was soon after deposed and himself in the great Hall of the Pantheon or Palace of Justice scituated in Emporium the Capital City created by the universall suffrage of the Army Lord Archon or sole Legislator of Oceana upon which Theater you have to conclude this piece a Person introduced whose Fame shall never draw his Curtain The Lord Archon being created fifty select persons to assist him by labouring in the Mines of ancient Prudence and bringing her hidden Treasures unto new light were added with the style also of Legislators and sate as a Council whereof he was the sole Director and President The Councill of Legislators OF this Piece being the greater half of the whole Work I shall be able at this time to give no farther Account then very briefly to shew at what it aymes My Lord Archon in opening the Councill of Legislators made it appear how unsafe a thing it is to follow Phansie in the Fabrick of a Common-wealth and how necessary that the Archives of ancient prudence should be ransackt before any Counsellour should presume to offer any other matter in order to the Work in hand or towards the consideration to be had by the Councill upon a Modell of Government Wherefore he caused an Urn to be brought and every one of the Counsellours to draw a Lot by the Lots as they were drawn The Common-wealth of Israel fell unto Phosphorus de Auge The Common-wealth of Athens fell unto Navarchus de Paralo The Common-wealth of Lacedemon fell unto Laco de Scytale The Common-wealth of Carthage fell unto Mago de Syrtibus The Common-wealth of the Achaeans Aetolians Lycians fell unto Aratus de Isthmo The Common-wealth of the Switz fell unto Alpester de Fulmine The Common-wealth of Holland the United Provinces fell unto Glaucus de Ulna The Common-wealth of Rome fell unto Dolabella de Enyo The Common-wealth of Venice fell unto Lynceus de Stella These containing in them all those excellencies whereof a Common-wealth is capable so that to have added more had been to no purpose upon time given unto the Counsellours by their own studies and those of their friends to prepare themselves were opened in the Order and by the persons mentioned at the Council of Legislators and afterwards by order of the same were repeated at the Council of the Prytans unto the people for in drawing of the Lots there were a matter of a Dozen of them inscribed with the letter P. which the Counsellours that drew became Prytans The Prytans were a Committee or Councill sitting in the great Hall of Pantheon to whom it was lawfull for any man to offer any thing in order to the Fabrick of the Common-wealth for which cause that they might not be oppressed by the throng there was a Rail about the Table where they sate and on each side of the same a Pulpit that on the right hand for any man that would propose any thing and that on the left for any other that would oppose him and all parties being indemnify'd 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 a matter of two or three hundred men lest the heat of the 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 Pallace called Alma This was that which made the people who were neither safely to be admitted unto nor conveniently to be excluded from the framing of their Common-wealth verily believe when it came forth that it was no other than that whereof they themselves had been the makers Moreover this Council sate divers Months after the publishing and during the promulgation of the Modell unto the people by which means there is scarce any thing was said or written for or against the said Modell but you shall have it with the next impression of this Work by way of Oration addressed unto and moderated by the Prytans By this means the Council of Legislators had their necessary solitude and due aym 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 Common-wealth in her place having been opened by her 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 one and out of each part of each one 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 to the end that it might be clearly discovered whether they did enterfere or could any wise come to interfere or jostle one the other for as such orders jostling
informing the people of the reason staid them two daies longer at the Muster and tooke 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 Gallaxy qualified the parties elected of it with power for the Terme of one yeare 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 Gallaxy qualified the parties elected of it with power for the terme of two yeares and no longer And upon the fourth day he chose the third Gallaxy according as it is directed by the Order impowered for three yeares which Lists successively falling like the signes or constellations of one Hemisphere that setting cause those of the other to rise cast the great Orbs of this Common-wealth into an Annuall Trienial and Perpetual Revolution The businesse of the Muster being thus happily finisht Hermes de Caduceo Lord Orator of the Tribe of Nubia being now put into her first Rapture caused one of the censors Pulpits to be planted in front of the squadron and ascending into the same spake after this manner My Lords the Magistrates and the People of the Tribe of NUBIA WE have this day solemnized the happy Nuptialls of the two greatest Princes that are upon the Earth or in Nature Arms and Councills in the Mutual Embraces whereof consisteth your whole Common-wealth whose Councills upon their perpetuall Wheelings Marches and Counter-marches create her Armies and whose Armies with the golden Vollies of the Ballot at once create and Salute her Councills There be such is the World now adaies that think it ridiculous to see a Nation exercising her Civill functions in military Discipline while they committing their Buffe unto their Servants come themselves to hold Trenchards For what availeth it such as are unarmed or which is all one whose Education acquainteth them not with the proper use of their Swords to be called Citizens What were two or three thousand of you well affected to your Country but naked unto one Troop of Mercenary Souldiers If they should come upon the Field and say Gentlemen It is thought fit that such and such men should be chosen by you where were your Liberty Or Gentlemen Parliaments are exceeding good but you are to have a little patience these Times are not so fit for them where were your Common-wealth What causeth the Monarchy of the Turks but Servants in Arms What was it that begot the glorious Common-wealth of Rome but the Sword in the hands of her Citizens wherefore my glad Eyes salute the Serenity and brightnesse of this day with a showr that shall not cloud it Behold the Army of Israel become a Common-wealth and the Common-wealth of Israel remaining an Army with her Rulers of Tens and of Fifties her Rulers of Hundreds and her Rulers of Thousands drawing near as this day throughout our happy Fields unto the Lot by her Tribes encreased above threefold and led up by her Phylarchs or Princes to sit Sellis Curulibus upon Fifty Thrones judging the Fifty Tribes of Oceana Or Is it Athens breaking from her Iron Sepulchre where she hath been so long Trampled upon by Hosts of Janizaries For certainly that nec vox hominem sonat is the voice of Theseus having gathered his scattered Athenians into one City Haec juris sui Parere Domino Civitas vni negat Rex ipse Populus annuas mandat vices Honoris huic illive This Free-born Nation liveth not upon the Dole or Bounty of one Man but distributing her Annuall Magistracies and Honours with her own hand is her self King People At which the Orator was a while interrupted with shouts but at length proceeded Is it grave Lacedemon in her Armed Tribe divided by her Obae and her Mora which appears to chide me that I teach the people to talk or conceive such Language as is drest like a woman to be a fit Usher of the Joyes of Liberty into the hearts of men Is it Rome in her Victorious Arms for so she held her Concio or Congregation that Congratulateth with us for finding out that which she could not hit on and binding up her Comitia Curiata Centuriata and Tributa in one inviolable League of Union Or is it the Great Councill of incomparable Venice bowling forth by the self-same Ballot her immortall Common-wealth For neither by Reason nor by her Experience is it impossible that a Common-wealth should be immortall seeing the people being the materials never dyes and the form which is motion must without opposition be endlesse The Bowl which is thrown from your hand if there be no rub no impediment shall never cease for which cause the glorious Luminaries that are the Bowles of God were once thrown for ever and next these those of Venice But certainly my Lords what ever these great Examples may have shewn us we are the first that have shewn unto the World a Common-wealth Established in her rise upon Fifty such Towers and so Garnizoned as are the Tribes of Oceana containing one hundred thousand Elders upon the Annuall List and yet but an out-guard besides her marching Armies to be equall in the discipline and in the number of her Youth And for as much as Soveraign powers is a necessary but a formidable creature not unlike the Powder which as you are Souldiers is at once your safety and your danger being subject to take fire against you as for you how well and securely is She by your Gallaxy's so collected as to be in full force and vigour and yet so distributed that it is impossible you should be blown up by your own Magazeen Let them who will have it that power if she be confin'd cannot be Soveraign tell us whether our Rivers do not enjoy a more secure and fruitfull raign within their proper banks then if it were lawful for them in ravishing our harvests to spill themselves whether soules not confin'd unto their peculiar bodies do govern them any more then those of Witches in their Trances Whether Power not confin'd unto the bounds of Reason and Virtue have any other bounds then those of Vice and Passion or if Vice and Passion be boundlesse and Reason and Virtue have certain Limits on which of these Thrones holy men should anoint their Soveraign But to blow away this dust The Soveraign power of a Common-wealth is no more bounded that is to say Streightened then that of a Monarch but is Ballanced The Eagle mounteth not unto her proper pitch if she be bounded nor if she be not ballanced And lest a Monarch should think that he can reach farther with his Scepter the Roman Eagle upon her Ballance spread her wings from the Ocean to Euphrates Receive the Soveraign Power you have received her hold her fast embrace her for ever in your shining Arms The virtue of the Loadstone is not impaired or Limited but receiveth strength and nourishment by being bound in
be master'd without study or that the people can have leisure to study is a vain imagination and what kind of Aristocracy Divines and Lawyers would make let their incurable run upon their own narrow bias and their perpetuall invectives against Machiavill though in some places justly reproveable yet the only Polititian and incomparable Patron of the people serve for instruction I will stand no more unto the Judgment of Lawyers and Divines in this work then unto that of so many other Tradesmen but if the Modell chance to wander abroad I recommend it unto the Roman Speculativi Garbatissimi Signori the most Compleat Gentleman of This Age for their censure or with my Lord Epimonus's his leave send three or four hundred Copies unto the Agent at Venice to be presented unto the Magistrates there and when they have considered them to be proposed unto the debate of the Senate the most competent Judges under Heaven who though they have great Affairs will not refuse to return you the Oracle of their Ballot The Counsellours of Princes I will not trust they are but Journy-men The wisdom of these later times in Princes Affairs saith Verulamius is rather fine deliveries and shiftings off dangers when they be near then solid and grounded courses to keep them aloof Their Counsellours do not derive their proceedings from any sound root of Government that may contain the demonstration and assure the successe of them but are expedient-mongers givers of themselves to help a lame dog over a stile else how commeth it to passe that the same of Cardinal Richelieu hath been like thunder whereof we hear the noise but can make no demonstration of the reason But to return if neither the People nor Divines and Lawyers can be the Aristocracy of a Nation there remains only the Nobility in which style to avoid farther repetition I shall understand the Gentry also as the French do by the word Noblisse Now to treat of the Nobility in such sort as may be lesse obnoxious unto mistake it will be convenient and responsible unto the present occasion that I divide my discourse into four Parts The first treating of Nobility and the kinds of it The second of their capacity of the Senate The third of the divers kinds of Senates The fourth of the Senate according unto the foregoing Orders Nobility may be defined divers wayes for it is either ancient riches or ancient virtue or title confer'd by a Prince or a Common-wealth Nobility of the first kind may be subdivided into two other such as hold an over-ballance in Dominion or Propriety unto the whole People or such as hold not an over-ballance In the former Case a Nobility such was the Gothicks of which sufficient hath been spoken is incompatible with popular Government for unto popular Government it is essential that power should be in the people but the overballance of a Nobility in Dominion draweth the power unto themselves wherefore in this sense it is that Machiavill is to be understood where he saith Questi tali sono pernitiosi in ogni Republica in ogni Provincia that these are pernicious in a Common-wealth and of France Spain and Italy that they are Nations lequali tutte inscieme sono la corruttela del mondo which for this cause are the corruption of the world for otherwise Nobility may according unto his definition which is That they are such as live upon their own revenues in plenty without engagement either unto the tilling of their Lands or other work for their livelihood hold an underballance unto the people In which case they are not onely safe but necessary unto the naturall mixture of a well-ordered Common-wealth For how else can you have a Common-wealth that is not altogether Mechanick or what comparison is there of such Common-wealths as are or come nearest to Mechanick for example Athens Switz Holland unto Lacedemon Rome and Venice plumed with their Aristocracies Your mechanicks till they have first feather'd their nests like the Fowles of the Ayr whose whole imployment is to seek their food are so busied in their private concernments that they have neither leisure to study the publick nor are safely to be trusted with it quia egestas haud facile habetur sine damno because a man is not faithfully imbarqued in this kind of ship if he have no share in the freight But if his share be such as gives him leisure by his private advantage to reflect upon that of the Publick what other name is there for this sort of men being à leur ayte but as Machiavill you see calls them Nobility especially when their families come to be such as are noted for their services done unto the Common-wealth and so take into their ancient riches ancient virtue which is the second definition of Nobility but such an one as is scarce possible in nature without the former For as the Baggage saith Verulamius is to an Army so are riches to Virtue they cannot be spared nor left behind though they be impedimenta such as not onely hinder the march but sometimes through the care of them lose or disturb the Victory Of this later sort is the Nobility of Oceana the best of all other because they having no stamp whence to derive their price can have it no otherwise then by their intrinsick value The third definition of Nobility is Title Honour or Distinction from the people conferr'd or allow'd by the Prince or the Common-wealth and this may be in two wayes either without any stamp or priviledge as in Oceana or with such priviledges as are inconsiderable as in Athens after the battel of Plateae whence the Nobility had no right as such but unto religious offices or inspection of the publick games whereunto they were also to be elected by the people or with priviledges and those considerable ones as the Nobility in Athens before the battel of Plateae and the Patricians in Rome each of which had right or claimed it unto the Senate and all the Magistracies wherein for some time they only by their stamp were current But to begin higher and speak more at large of Nobility in their several capacities of the Senate à Jove Principium The Phylarchs or Princes of the Tribes of Israel were the most renowned or as the Latine the most noble of the Congregation Numb 1.16 whereof by hereditary right they had the leading and judging The Patriarchs or Princes of Families according as they declared their pedigrees Numb 1.18 had the like right as to their Families but neither in these nor the former was there any hereditary right unto the Sanhedrim though there be little question but the wise men and understanding and known among their Tribes which the people took or elected into those or other Magistracies and Moses made Rulers over them Deut. 1.13 must have been of these seeing these could not choose but be the most known among the Tribes and were likeliest by the advantages of education to
people have made a very ill choice in the man who is not easily capable of the perfect knowledge in one year of the Senatorian Orders which knowledge allowing him for the first to have been a Novice brings him the second year unto practice and time enough for at this rate you must alwaies have two hundred knowing men in the Government and thus the vicissitude of your Senators is not perceiveable in the steddinesse and perpetuity of your Senate which like that of Venice being alwaies changing is for ever the same and though other Polititians have not so well imitated their pattern there is nothing more obvious in nature seeing a man who wears the same flesh but a short time is neverthelesse the same man and of the same Genius and whence is this but from the constancy of nature in holding a man unto her Orders Wherefore hold also unto your Orders but this is a mean request your Orders will be worth little if they do not hold you unto them wherefore imbarque They are like a ship if you be once aboard you do not carry them but they you and see how Venice stands unto her tacklin you will no more forsake them then you will leap into the Sea But they are very many and difficult O my Lords what Seaman casts away his Carde because it hath four and twenty points of Compasse and yet those are very near as many and as difficult as the Orders in the whole Circumference of your Common-wealth Consider how have we been tossed with every wind of Doctrine lost by the glib tongues of your Demagogs and Grandees in our own Havens A Company of Fidlers that have disturbed your rest for your groat two to one three thousand pounds a year to another hath been nothing and for what is there one of them that yet knowes what a Common-wealth is And are you yet afraid of such a Government in which these shall not dare to scrape for fear of the Statute Themistocles could not fiddle but could make of a small City a great Common-wealth these have fiddled and for your money till they have brought a great Common-wealth to a small City It grieves me while I consider how and from what causes imaginary difficulties will be aggravated that the foregoing Orders are not capable of any greater clearnesse in discourse or writing But if a man should make a book describing every trick or passage it would fare no otherwise with a game at Cards and this is no more if a man play upon the square There is a great difference saith Verulamius between a cunning man and a wise man between a Demagog and a Legislator not onely in point of honesty but in point of ability As there be that can pack the Cards and yet cannot play well so there be some that are good in canvasses and factions that are otherwise weak men Allow me but these Orders and let them come with their Cards in their sleeves or pack if they can Again saith he it is one thing to understand persons and another to understand matters for many are perfect in mens humours that are not greatly capable of the reall part of businesse which is the constitution of one that hath studied men more then books but there is nothing more hurtfull in a State than that cunning men passe for wise His words are an Oracle As Dionysius when he could no longer exercise his tyranny among men turned School-master that he might exercise it among boyes Allow me but these Orders and your Grandees so well skilled in the baites and palates of men shall turn Rat-catchers And whereas Councils as is discreetly observed by the same Authour in his time are at this day in most places but familiar meetings somewhat like the Academy of Provosts where matters are rather talked on then debated and run too swift to order an Act of Council Give me my Orders and see if I have not trashed your Demagogs It is not so much my desire to return upon haunts as theirs that will not be satisfied wherefore if notwithstanding what was said of dividing and choosing in our Preliminary discourses men will yet be returning unto the question Why the Senate must be a Council apart though even in Athens where it was of no other constitution then the Popular Assembly the distinction of it from the other was never held lesse then necessary this may be added unto the former reasons that if the Aristocracy be not for the Debate it is for nothing but if it be for the Debate it must have convenience for it and what convenience is there for debate in a crowd where there is nothing but jostling treading upon one another and stirring of blood than which in this case there is nothing more dangerous Truly it was not ill said of my Lord Epimonus That Venice playes her Game as it were at billiards or nine-holes and so may your Lordships unlesse your ribs be so strong that you think better of football for such sport is debate in a Popular Assembly as notwithstanding the distinction of the Senate was the destruction of Athens This Speech concluded the Debate which happened at the Institution of the Senate the next Assembly is that of the People or Prerogative Tribe The Face or nime of the Prerogative Tribe for the Arms the Horses and the Discipline but more especially for the select Men is that of a very noble Regiment or rather of two the One of Horse divided into three Troops besides that of the Provinces which will be shewn hereafter with their Captains Cornets and two Tribunes of the Horse at the head of them The other of Foot in three Companies besides that of the Provinces with their Captains Ensigns and two Tribunes of the Foot at the head of them The first Troop is called the Phoenix the second the Pelican and the third the Swallow The first Company the Cypresse the second the Mirtle and the third the Spray Of these again not without a near resemblance of the Roman Division of a Tribe the Phoenix and the Cypresse constitute the first Classis the Pelican and the Myrtle the second and the Swallow with the Spray the third renewed every Spring by order 21 The One and Twentieth Order Directing that upon every Monday next ensuing the last of March the Deputies of the annuall Gallaxy arriving at the Pavilion in the Halo and electing one Captain and one Cornet of the Swallow Trienniall Officers by and out of the Cavalry at the Horse Urn according unto the Rules contained in the Ballot of the Hundred And one Captain with one Ensign of the Spray Trienniall Officers by and out of the Infantry at the Foot Urn after the same way of ballotting Constitute and become the third Classis of the Prerogative Tribe Seven Deputies are annually returned by every Tribe whereof three are Horse and four are Foot and there be fifty Tribes so the Swallow must consist of 150
Horse the Spray of 200 Foot and the rest of the Classes being two each of them in number equal◠the whole Prerogative besides the Provinces that is the Knights and Deputies of Marpesia and Panopea must consist of 1050 Deputies It is right And these Troops and Companies may as well be called Centuries as those of the Romans for the Romans related not in so naming theirs unto the number And whereas they were distributed according unto the valuation of their Estates so are these which by virtue of the last Order are now accommodated with their Triennial Officers but there be others appertaining unto this Tribe whose Election being of far greater Importance is Annual as followeth in order 22 The Twenty second Order Whereby the first Classis having Elected their Trienniall Officers and made Oath unto the Old Tribunes That they will neither introduce cause nor to their power suffer debate to be introduced into any popular Assembly of this Government but to their utmost be ayding and assisting to seize and deliver any Person or Persons in that way offending and striking at the Root of this Common-wealth unto the Councill of War are to procéed with the other two Classes of the Prerogative Tribe to Election of the New Tribunes being four Annual Magistrates whereof two are to be elected out of the Cavalry at the Horse-Urn and two out of the Infantry at the Foot-Urn according unto the Common ballot of the Tribes And they may be promiscuously Chosen out of any Classis provided that the same Person shall not be capable of beating the Tribunitian Honour twice in the term of one Gallaxy The Tribunes thus chosen shall receive the Tribe in reference to the power of Mustering and Disciplining the same as Commanders in Chief and for the rest as Magistrates whose proper function is prescribed by the next Order The Tribunes may give leave unto any number of the Prerogative not excéeding one hundred at a time to be absent so they be not Magistrates nor Officers and return within thrée moneths If a Magistrate or Officer have necessary occasion he may also be absent for the space of one moneth provided that there be not above thrée Cornets or Ensigns two Captains or one Tribune so absent at one time To this the Archon spoke at the Institution after this manner My Lords It is affirmed by Cicero in his Oration for Flaccus That the Common-wealths of Greece were all shaken or ruined by the intemperance of their Comitia or Assemblies of the People The truth is if good heed in this point be not taken a Common-wealth will have bad Leggs But all the World knowes he should have excepted Lacedemon where the People as hath been shewn by the Oracle had no power at all of Debate nor till after Lysander whose Avarice opened a Gulph that was not long ere it swallowed up his Country came it ever to be exercised by them Whence that Common-wealth stood longest and firmest of any other but this in our dayes of Venice which having underlaid her Self with the like Institution owes a great if not the greatest part of her steadinesse unto the same principle the great Council which is with her the People by the Authority of my Lord Epimonus never speaking a word Nor shall any Common-wealth where the People in their political capacity is talkative ever see half the dayes of one of these But being carried away by Vain-glorious Men that as Overbury sayes Pisse more then they drink Swim down the sink as did Athens the most prating of these Dames when that same ranting fellow Alcibiades fell on Demagoging for the Sicilian War But whereas Debate by the Authority and experience of Lacedemon and Venice is not to be committed unto the People in a well ordered Government It may be said That the Order specify'd is but a slight barre in a matter of like danger For so much as an Oath if there be no recourse upon the breach of it is a weak tye for such hands as have the Sword in them Wherefore what should hinder the People of Oceana if they happen not to regard an Oath from assuming Debate and making themselves as much an Anarchy as those of Athens To which I answer Take the Common sort in a private Capacity and except they be injured you shall find them to have Verecundiam Patrum a bashfulnesse in the presence of the better sort or wiser Men acknowledging their abilities by attention and accounting it no mean Honour to receive respect from them But if they be injured by them they hate them and the more for being wise or great because that makes it the greater injury Nor refrain they in this Case from any kind of intemperance of speech if of Action It is no otherwise with a People in their political Capacity You shall never find that they have assum'd Debate for it self but for something else Wherefore in Lacedemon where there was and in Venice where there is nothing else for which they should assume it they have never shewn so much as an inclination to it Nor was there any appearance of such a desire in the People of Rome who from the time of Romulus had been very well contented with the Power of Result either Comitiis Curiatis as it was settled upon them by him or Centuriatis as it was alter'd in their regard for the worse by Servius Tullius till news was brought some fifteen years after the exile of Tarquine their late King during which time the Senate had governed passing well that he was dead at the Court of Aristodemus the Tyrant of Cumae Eo nuncio erecti patres erecta Plebs Sed Patribus nimis luxuriosa ea fuit laetitia Plebi cui ad eam diem summâ ope inservitum erat injuriae à Primoribus fieri coepêre Whereupon the Patricians or Nobility began to let out the hitherto dissembled Venom which is inherent in the root of Oligarchy and fell immediately upon injuring the People beyond all moderation For whereas the People had served both gallantly and contentedly in Arms upon their own Charges and though joynt Purchasers by their Swords of the conquer'd Lands had not participated in the same to above two Acres a man the rest being secretly usurped by the Patricians they through the meannesse of their support and the greatnesse of their expence being generally indebted no sooner returned home with Victory to lay down their Arms then they were snatcht up by their Creditors the Nobility to cram Goales Whereupon but with the greatest modesty that was ever known in the like case they first fell upon debate Se foris pro libertate imperio dimicantes domi à civibus captos oppressos esse tutioremque in bello quam in pace inter hostes quam inter cives libertatem plebis esse It is true that when they could not get the Senate through fear as was pretended by the Patricians to assemble and take their grievances
it So they concluded with Appius who also had been Dictator if the Consuls and some of the graver sort had not thought it altogether unseasonable at a time when the Volsci and the Sabins were up again to venture so far upon Alienation of the People for which cause Valerius being descended from the Publicola's the most Popular Family as also in his own person of a mild nature was rather trusted with so rigid a Magistracy Whence it happened that the People though they knew well enough against whom the Dictator was created feared nothing from Valerius But upon a new promise made to the same effect with that of Servilius hoped better another time and throwing away all Disputes gave their Names roundly went out and to be brief came home again as Victorious as in the former Action the Dictator entring the City in Triumph Neverthelesse when he came to presse the Senate to make good his promise and do something for the ease of the People they regarded him no more as to that point then they had done Servilius Whereupon the Dictator in disdain to be made a stale abdicated his Magistracy and went home Here then was a Victorious Army without a Captain and a Senate pulling it by the beard in their Gowns What is it if You have read the Story for there is not such another that must follow Can any Man imagine that such only should be the opportunity upon which this People could run away Alas poor men the Aequi and the Volsci and the Sabines were nothing but the Fathers invincible There they sate some three hundred of them armed all in Robes and thundring with their Tongues no hopes in the earth to reduce them unto any tolerable Conditions Wherefore no thinking to abide long so near them away marches the Army and encamps in the Fields This Retreat of the People is called the Secession of Mount Aventine where they lodged very sad at their Condition but not letting fall so much as a word of Murmur against the Fathers The Senate by this time were great Lords had the whole City unto themselves but certain Neighbours were upon the way that might come to speak with them not asking leave of the Porter Wherefore their minds became troubled and an Orator was posted unto the People to make as good Conditions with them as he could but whatever the terms were to bring them home with all speed And here it was covenanted between the Senate and the People That these should have the Magistrates of their own Election called the Tribunes upon which they returned To hold you no longer the Senate having done this upon necessity made frequent attempts to retract it again while the Tribunes on the other side to defend what they had gotten instituted their Tributa Comitia or Councill of the People where they came in time and as disputes increased to make Lawes without the Authority of the Senate called Plebiscita Now to conclude in the Point at which I drive such were the steps whereby the People of Rome came to assume Debate nor is it in Art or Nature to debarre a People of the like effect where there is the like cause For Romulus having in the Election of his Senate squared out a Nobility for the support of a Throne by making that of the Patricians a distinct and hereditary Order planted the Common-wealth upon two contrary Interests or Roots which shooting forth in time produced two Common-wealths the one Oligarchical in the Nobility and the other a meer Anarchy of the People which thenceforth caused a perpetual feud and enmity between the Senate and the People even to death There is not a more noble or usefull question in the Politicks then that which is started by Machiavil Whether means were to be found whereby the Enmity that was between the Senate and the people of Rome might have been removed Nor is there any other in which we or the present occasion are so much concerned particularly in relation unto this Author For as much as his Judgment in the determination of the question standing our Common-wealth falleth And he that will erect a Common-wealth against the Judgment of Machiavill is obliged to give such reasons for his enterprize as must not go on begging Wherefore to repeat the Polititian very honestly but somewhat more briefly He disputes thus There be two sorts of Common-wealths the one for Preservation as Lacedemon and Venice The other for Encrease as Rome Lacedemon being governed by a King and a small Senate could maintain it self a long time in that Condition because the Inhabitants being few having put a bar upon the reception of Strangers and living in strict observation of the Lawes of Lycurgus which now had gotten reputation and taken away all occasion of Tumults might well continue long in Tranquillity For the Lawes of Lycurgus introduced a greater equality in Estates and a less equality in Honours whence there was equall Poverty and the Plebeians were lesse Ambitious because the Honours or Magistracies of the City could extend but unto a few and were not communicable unto the People nor did the Nobility by using them ill ever give them a desire to participate of the same This proceeded from the Kings whose Principality being placed in the midst of the Nobility had no greater means whereby to support it self then to shield the People from all Injury Whence the People not fearing Empire desired it not And so all occasion of enmity between the Senate and the People was barr'd But this union happened especially from two causes the one that the Inhabitants of Lacedemon being few could be govern'd by the Few The other that not receiving Strangers into their Common-wealth they did not corrupt it nor increase it unto such a Proportion as was not governable by the Few Venice hath not divided with her Plebeians but all are called Gentlemen that be in administration of the Government for which Government She is more beholding unto Chance then the Wisdome of her Law-makers For many retiring unto those Islands where that City is now built from the inundations of Barbarians that overwhelm'd the Roman Empire when they were encreased unto such a number that to live together it was necessary to have Lawes They Ordained a form of Government whereby assembling often in Council upon Affairs and finding their number sufficient for Government they put a barre upon all such as repairing afterwards unto their City should become Inhabitants excluding them from participation of Power Whence they that were included in the Administration had right and they that were excluded coming afterwards and being received upon no other Conditions to be Inhabitants had no wrong and therefore had no occasion nor were they trusted with Arms and therefore had no means to be tumultuous Wherefore this Common-Wealth might very well maintain her Self in Tranquillity These things considered it is plain that the Roman Legislators to have introduced a quiet State must have
no other Cause then her Equality For Venice to say that she is quiet because she disarms her Subjects is to forget that Lacedemon disarmed her Helots and yet could not in their regard be quiet wherefore if Venice be defended from external causes of commotion it is first through her situation in which respect her Subjects have no hope and this indeed may be attributed unto her fortune and secondly through her exquisite Justice whence they have no will to invade her but this can be attributed to no other cause then her prudence which will appear to be greater as we look nearer for the effects that proceed from fortune if there be any such thing are like their cause unconstant but there never happened unto any other Common-wealth so undisturbed and constant a tranquillity and peace in her self as is that of Venice wherefore this must proceed from some other cause then Chance And we see that as she is of all others the most quiet so the most equal Common-wealth Her body consists of one Order and her Senate is like a rolling stone as was said which never did nor while it continues upon that rotation ever shall gather the mosse of a divided or ambitious interest much lesse such an one as that which grasped the people of Rome in the talons of their own Eagles And if Machiavill a verse from doing this Common-wealth right had consider'd her Orders as his reader shall easily perceive he never did he must have been so far from attributing the prudence of them unto Chance that he would have touched up his admirable work unto that perfection which as to the civil part hath no pattern in the universall World but this of Venice Rome secure by her Potent and Victorious Arms from all external causes of commotion was either beholding for her peace at home unto her Enemies abroad or could never rest her head My Lords you that are Parents of a Common-wealth and so freer Agents then such as are meer natural have a care Fo ras no man shall shew me a Commonwealth born streight that ever became crooked so no man shall shew me a Common-wealth born crooked that ever became streight Rome was crooked in her birth or rather prodigious her twins the Patricians and Plebeian Orders came as was shewn by the foregoing story into the world one body but two heads or rather two bellies for notwithstanding the Fable out of Aesop whereby Menenius Agrippa the Orator that was sent from the Senate unto the People at Mount Aventine shew'd the Fathers to be the belly and the people to be the Arms and the Legs which except that how sloathful soever it might seem were nourished not these but the whole body must languish and be dissolved it is plain that the Fathers were a distinct belly such an one as took the meat indeed out of the peoples mouthes but abhorring the Agrarian returned it not in the due and necessary nutrition of a Common-wealth Neverthelesse as the people that live about the Cataracts of Nilus are said not to hear the noise so neither the Roman Writers nor Machiavill the most conversant with them seem among so many of the Tribunitian storms to hear their natural voice for though they could not misse of it so far as to attribute them unto the strife of the People for participation in Magistracy or in which Machiavill more particularly joyns unto that about the Agrarian this was to take the businesse short and the remedy for the disease Cujus levamen mali Plebes nisi suis in summo imperio locatis nullum speraret A People when they are reduced unto misery and despair become their own Polititians as certain beasts when they are sick become their own Physitians and are carried by a natural instinct unto the desire of such herbs as are their proper cure but the people for the greater part are beneath the beasts in the use of them Thus the people of Rome though in their misery they had recourse by instinct as it were unto the two main Fundamentals of a Common-wealth Participation of Magistracy and the Agrarian did but taste and spet at them not which is necessary in Physick drink down the potion and in that their healths For when they had obtained participation of Magistracy it was but lamely not to a full and equall rotation in all elections nor did they greatly regard it in so much as they had gotten And when they had attained unto the Agrarian they neglected it so far as to suffer the Law to grow obsolete but if you do not take the due dose of your Medicines as there be slight tasts which a man may have of Philosophy that incline unto Atheisme it may chance be poyson there being a like taste of the Politiques that inclines to Confusion as appears in the Institution of the Roman Tribunes by which Magistracy and no more the people were so far from attaining unto peace that they in getting but so much got but heads for eternal feud whereas if they had attained in perfection either unto the Agrarian they had introduced the equality and calm of Lacedemon or unto Rotation they had introduced that of Venice And so there could have been no more Enmity between the Senate and the People of Rome then there was between those Orders in Lacedemon or is in Venice Wherefore Machiavill seemeth unto me in attributing the peace of Venice more unto her luck then her prudence of the whole stable to have saddled the wrong horse for though Rome quae non imitabile fulmen Aere et cornupedum cursu simulârat Equorum in her Military part could beat it better beyond all comparison upon the sounding hoof Venice for the Civil hath plainly had the wings of Pegasus The whole Question then will come upon this Point Whether the People of Rome could have obtained these Orders And first to say that they could not have obtained them without altering the Common-wealth is no argument seeing neither could they without altering the Common-wealth have obtained their Tribunes which neverthelesse were obtained And if a man consider the posture that the people were in when they obtained their Tribunes they might as well and with as great ease for as much as the reason why the Nobility yielded unto the Tribunes was no other then that there was no remedy have obtained any thing else And for experience it was in the like case that the Lacedemonians set up their Ephors and the Athenians after the battel of Plateae bowed the Senate so hard a thing it is for a Commonwealth that was born crooked to become streight as much the other way Nor if it be objected that this must have ruin'd the Nobility and in that deprived the Common-wealth of the Greatnesse which she acquired by them is this opinion holding but confuted by the sequell of the story shewing plainly that the Nobility through the defect of such Orders that is to say of Rotation and
the Agrarian came to eat up the people and battening themselves in Luxury to be as Salust speaketh of them Inertissumi nobiles in quibus sicut in statua praeter nomen nihil erat additamenti to bring so mighty a Common-wealth so huge a glory unto so deplorable an end Wherefore means might have been found whereby the enmity that was between the Senate and the People of Rome might have been removed My Lords If I have argued well I have given you the comfort and assurance that notwithstanding the judgment of Machiavill your Common-wealth is both safe and sound but if I have not argued well then take the comfort and assurance which he gives you while he is firm That a Legislator is to lay aside all other examples and follow that of Rome only conniving and temporizing with the enmity between the Senate and the People as a necessary step unto the Roman Greatnesse Whence it followes that your Common-wealth at the worst is that which he hath given you his word is the best I have held your Lordships long but upon an account of no small importance which I can now sum up in these few words Where there is a lickerrishnesse in a popular Assembly to Debate it proceedeth not from the constitution of the People but of the Common-wealth Now that the Common-wealth is of such Constitution as is naturally free from this kind of intemperance is that which to make good I must divide the remainder of my Discourse into two Parts The First shewing the several Constitutions of the Assemblies of the People in other Common-wealths The Second comparing of Our Assembly of the People with Theirs and shewing how it excludeth the inconveniences and embraceth the conveniencies of them all IN the beginning of the first Part I must take notice that among the Popular error of our dayes it is no small one That men imagines the ancient Governments of this kind to have consisted for the most part of one City that is of one Town whereas by what we have learnt of my Lords that open'd them it appears that there was not any considerable one of such a constitution but Carthage till this in our dayes of Venice For to begin with Israel it consisted of the twelve Tribes locally spread or quartered throughout the whole Territory these being called together by Trumpets constituted the Church or Assembly of the people The vastnesse of this weight as also the slownesse thence inavoidable became a great cause as hath been shewn at large by my Lord Phosphorus of the breaking that Common-wealth notwithstanding that the Temple and those religious Ceremonies for which the people were at least annually obliged to repair thither were no small ligament of the Tribes otherwise but slightly tack'd together Athens consisted of four Tribes taking in the whole People both of the City and of the Territory not so gather'd by Theseus into one Town as to exclude the Country but to the end that there might be some Capital of the Commonwealth though true it be that the Congregation consisting of the Inhabitants within the Walls was sufficient to all intents and purposes without those of the Country these also being exceeding numerous became burdensome unto themselves and dangerous unto the Common-wealth the more for their ill education as is observed by Xenophon and Polybius who compare them unto Marriners that in a calm are perpetually disputing and swaggering one with another and never lay their hands unto the Common tackling or safety till they be all indangered by some storm Which caused Thucydides when he saw this people through the purchase of their misery become so much wiser as to reduce their Comitia or Assemblies unto five thousand to say as in his eighth Book And now at least in my time the Athenians seem to have ordered their State aright consisting of a moderate temper both of the Few by which he means the Senate of the Bean and of the Many or the five thousand and he doth not only give you his judgment but the best proof of it for this saith he was the first thing that after so many misfortunes past made the City again to raise her head The place I would desire your Lordships to note as the first example that I find or think is to be found of a popular Assembly by way of Representative Lacedemon consisted of thirty thousand Citizens dispersed throughout Laconia one of the greatest Provinces in all Greece and divided as by some Authors is probable into six Tribes of the whole Body of these being gather'd consisted the great Church or Assembly which had the Legislative power the little Church gather'd sometimes for matters of concernment within the City consisted of the Spartans only these happened like that of Venice to be good constitutions of a Congregation but from an ill cause the infirmity of a Common-wealth which through her Paucity was Oligarchical Wherefore go which way you will it should seem that without a Representative of the people your Commonwealth consisting of an whole Nation can never avoid falling either into Oligarchy or confusion This was seen by the Romans whose rustick Tribes extending themselves from the river Arno unto the Vulturnus that is from Fesulae or Florence unto Capua invented a way of Representative by Lots the Tribe upon which the first fell being the prerogative and some two or three more that had the rest the Jure-vocatae These gave the Suffrage of the Common-wealth binis Comitiis the Prerogative at the first Assembly and the Jure vocatae at a second Now to make the paralel All the inconveniences that you have observed in these Assemblies are shut out and all the conveniences taken in to your prerogative for first it is that for which Athens shaking off the blame of Xenophon and Polybius came to deserve the praise of Thucydides a Representative and secondly not as I suspect in that of Athens and is past suspition in this of Rome by lot but by suffrage as was also the late House of Commons by which means in the prerogatives all the Tribes of Oceana are Jure Vocatae and if a man shall except against the paucity of the standing number it is a wheel which in the revolution of a few years turneth every hand that is fit or fitteth every hand that it turns unto the publick work Moreover I am deceived if upon due consideration it do not fetch your Tribes with greater equality and ease unto themselves and unto the Government from the frontiers of Marpesia than Rome ever brought any one of hers out of her Pomaeria or the nearest parts of her adjoyning Territories To this you may adde That whereas a Common-wealth which in regard of the People is not of facility in execution were sure enough in this Nation to be cast off through impatience Your Musters and Gallaxy's are given unto the people as milk unto babes whereby when they are brought up through four dayes election in an whole
of the whole Nation are to be improoved by such Augmentations as may make a very decent and comfortable subsistance for the Ministry which is neither to be allow'd Synods nor Assemblies but upon the occasion shewn in the Universities they are consulted by the Councill for Religion suffred to meddle with affaires of State nor to be capable of any other publick preferment whatsoever by which means the interest of the learned can never come to corrupt your Religion nor disturb your Government which otherwise it would most certainly do Venice though she do not see or cannot help the corruption of her Religion is yet so circumspect to avoid disturbance in this kind of her Government that her Council proceeds not unto election of Magistrates till it be proclaimed Fora Papalini by which words such as have consanguinity with red hats or relation unto the Court of Rome are warned to withdraw If a Minister in Holland meddle with matter of State the Magistrate sendeth him a pair of shooes whereupon if he do not go he is driven away from his charge I wonder why Ministers of all men should be perpetually tampering with Government first because they as well as others have it in expresse charge to submit themselves unto the Ordinances of men and secondly because these Ordinances of men must go upon such Politicall Principles as they of all others by any thing that can be found in their writings or actions least understand whence you have the suffrage of all Nations unto this sense An ounce of wisdom is worth a pound of Clergy Your greatest Clerks are not your wisest men and when some foul absurdity in State is committed it is common with the French and even the Italians to call it Pas de Clerc or Governo du Prete They may bear with men that will be preaching without study while they will be governing without Prudence My Lords if you know not how to rule the Clergy you will most certainly be like a man that cannot rule his Wife have neither quiet at home nor honour abroad Their honest Vocation is to teach your Children at the Schools and the Universities and the people in the Parishes and Yours is concern'd to see that they do not play the shrewes of which parts consists the Education of your Common-wealth so far forth as it regards Religion To Justice or that part of it which is commonly executive answers the Education of the Inns of Court or Chancery Upon which to Philosophize requires a peculiar kind of Learning that I have not But they who take upon them any Profession proper unto the Educations mentioned that is Theology Physick Law are not at leisure for the Essayes Wherefore the Essays being Degrees whereby the Youth Commence for all Magistracies Offices and Honours in the Parish Hundred Tribe Senate or Prerogative Divines Physicians and Lawyers not taking these Degrees exclude themselves from all such Magistracies Offices and Honours And whereas Lawyers are likest to exact farther reason for this They growing up from the most gainful Art at the Barr unto those Magistracies upon the Bench which are continually appropriated to themselves and not onely endowed with the greatest Revenues but held for life have the least reason of all the rest to pretend unto any other Especially in an equal Commonwealth where Accumulation of Magistracy or to take a Person engaged by his Profit unto the Lawes as they stand into the Power which is Legislative and should keep them unto what they were or ought to be were a Soloecisme in Prudence It is true that the Legislative power may have need of Advice and Assistance from the executive Magistracy or such as are learned in the Law for which Cause the Judges are as they have heretofore been Assistants in the Senate Nor however it came about can I see any reason why a Judge being but an Assistant a Lawyer should be a member of a Legislative Council I deny not that the Roman Patricians were all Patrons and that the whole People were Clients some unto one family and some unto another by which means they had their Causes pleaded and defended in some appearance gratis for the Patron took no money though if he had a daughter to marry his Clients were to pay her portion nor was this so much But if the Client accused his Patron gave testimony or Suffrage against him it was a crime of such nature that any man might lawfully kill him as a Traytor and this as being the nerve of the Optimacy was a great cause of ruine unto that Common-wealth for when the people would carry any thing that pleased not the Senate the Senators were ill provided if they could not intercede that is oppose it by their Clients with whom to vote otherwise then they pleased was so high a Crime The observation of this bond till the time of the Gracchi that is to say till it was too late or to no purpose to break it was the cause why in all the former heats and disputes that had happened between the Senate and the People it never came to blowes which was good but withall the people could have no remedy which was Evil Wherefore I am of opinion that a Senator ought not to be a Patron or Advocate nor a Patron or Advocate to be a Senator for if his practice be gratis it debaucheth the people and if it be mercenary it debaucheth himself take it which way you will when he should be making of Lawes he will be knitting of Nets Lycurgus as I said by being a Traveller became a Legislator but in times when Prudence was another thing Neverthelesse we may not shut out this part of Education in a Common-wealth which will be her Self a Traveller for those of this make have seen the World especially because this though it be not regarded in our times when things being left to take their chance it fares with us accordingly is certain No man can be a Polititian except he be first an Historian or a Traveller for except he can see what Must be oâ— what May be he is no Polititian Now if he have no knowledge in story he cannot tell what hath been and if he hath not been a Traveller he cannot tell what is but he that neither knoweth what hath been nor what is can never tell what must be or what may be Furthermore the Embassies in ordinary by our constitution are the Prizes of young men more especially such as have been Travellers Wherefore they of these inclinations having leave of the Censors owe them accompt of their time and cannot choose but lay it out with some ambition of Praise or Reward where both are open whence you will have eyes abroad and better choice of Publique Ministers your Gallants shewing themselves not more unto the Ladies at their balls than unto your Commonwealth at her Academy when they return from their Travels But this Common-wealth being constituted more especially of two Elements Arms and
Councils driveth by a natural instinct at Courage and Wisdome which he who hath attained is arriv'd at the perfection of humane nature It is true that these Virtues must have some naturall root in him that is capable of them but this amounteth not unto so great a matter as some will have it For if Poverty make an industrious a moderate Estate a temperate and a Lavish fortune a Wanton Man and this be the common course of things Wisdom is rather of necessity than Inclination And that an Army which was meditating upon Flight hath been brought by Despair to win the Field is so far from being strange that like Causes will evermore produce like Effects Wherefore this Common-wealth driveth her Citizens like Wedges there is no way with them but through nor end but that Glory whereof Man is capable by Art or Nature That the Genius of the Roman Families preserved it self throughout the line as to instance in some that the Manlii were still severe the Publicolae lovers and the Appiâ— haters of the people is attributed by Marchiavill unto their Education nor if interest might adde unto the reason why the Genius of a Patrician was one thing and that of a Plebeian another is the like so apparent between different Nations who according unto their different Educations have yet as different manners It was anciently noted and long confirmed by the French that in their first assaults their courage was more then that of men and for the rest lesse then that of women which neverthelesse through the amendment of their discipline we see to be otherwise I will not say but that some Man or Nation upon equall improvement of this kind may be lighter then some other but certainly Education is the scale without which no Man or Nation can truly know his or her own weight or value By our Histories we can tell when one Marpesian would have beaten ten Oceaners and when one Oceaner would have beaten ten Marpesians Marc Anthony was a Roman but how did that appear in the embraces of Cleopatra You must have some other Education for your Youth or they like that passage will shew better in Romance then true Story The Custom of the Common-wealth of Rome in distributing her Magistracies without respect of age happened to do well in Corvinus and Scipio for which cause Machiavill with whom that which was done by Rome and that which is well done is for the most part all one commendeth this course Yet how much it did work at other times is obvious in Pompey Caesar examples by which Bocalini illustrateth the Prudence of Venice in her contrary practice affirming it to have been no small step unto the ruine of the Roman Liberty that these having tasted in their Youth of the Supream Honours had no greater in their age to hope for but by perpetuating of the same in themselves which came to Blood and ended in Tyranny The opinion of Verulamius is safe The Errours saith he of Young Men are the ruine of Businesse whereas the errours of aged men amount but to this that more might have been done or sooner But though their Wisdome be little their Courage is great Wherefore to come unto the main Education of this Common-wealth the Militia of Oceana is the Province of Youth The distribution of this Province by the Essays is so fully described in the Order that I need repeat nothing The Order it self being but a Repetition or Copy of that Originall which in ancient Prudence is of all other the fairest as that from whence the Commonwealth of Rome more especially derived the Empire of the World And there is much more reason in this age when Governments are universally broken or swerved from their Foundations and the People groan under Tyranny that the same causes which could not be withstood when the World was full of Popular Governments should have the like effect The Causes in the Common-wealth of Rome whereof the Empire of the World was not any miraculous but a naturall nay I may safely say necessary consequence are contained in that part of her discipline which was domestick and in that which shee exercised in her provinces or conquest Of the latter I shall have better occasion to speak when we come unto our Provinciall Orbes the former divided the whole People by Tribes amounting as Livy shewes at their full growth unto thirty five and every Tribe by the Cense or valuation of Estates into five Classes for the sixth being Proletary that is the Nursery or such as through their Poverty contributed nothing to the Commonwealth but Children was not reckoned nor used in Armes And this is the first point of the Militia in which Moderne Prudence is quite contrary unto the Ancient for where as we excusing the rich and arming the Poore become the vassalls of our Servants they by excusing the Poor and Arming such as were rich enough to be Freemen became Lords of the Earth The Nobility and Gentry of this Nation who understand so little what it is to be Lords of the Earth that they have not been able to keep their Lands will think it a strange education for their Children to be common Souldiers and obliged unto all the duties of Armes neverthelesse it is not for 4 s. a week but to be capable of being the best man in the Feild or in the City the latter part of which consideration makes the Common Souldier in this a better man then the Generall of any Monarchicall Army And whereas it may be thought that this would drink deep of Noble Blood I dare boldly say take the Roman Nobility in the heat of their fiercest Warrs and you shall not find such a shambles of them as hath been made of ours by meer luxury and slothfullnesse which killing the body Animalsque in vulnere ponunt kill the Soul also whereas Common right is that which who stands in the vindication of hath used that Sword of Justice for which he receiveth the purple of Magistracy the glory of a man on Earth can go no higher and if he fall he riseth and comes sooner unto that reward which is so much higher as Heaven is above Earth To return unto the Roman example Every Classis was divided as hath been more then once shewn into Centurys and every Century was equally divided into Youth and Elders the Youth for Forraigne Service and the Elders for the Guard of the Territory In the first Classis were a matter of eighteene Centurys of Horse being those which by the Justitution of Servius were first called unto the suffrage Centuriâ—tis But the delectus oâ— Levy of an Army which is the present businesse proceeded according to Polybius in this manner Upon a Warr decreed the Consuls elected four and twenty military Tribunes or Colonels whereof ten being such as had merited their tenth Stipend were younger Officers The Tribunes being chosen the Consuls appointed the day unto the Tribes when those in them of military Age
at the Tropick of four Knights being trienniall Magistrates out of the Region of the Senate whose terme expireth and of one Knight out of the same Region to be Strategus or Generall of the Province which Magistracy is annuall The Strategus or Magistrate thus chosen shall be as well President of the Provinciall Council with power to propose unto the same as Generall of the Army The Council for the rest shall elect weekly Provosts having any two of them also right to propose after the manner of the Senatorian Councils of Oceana And whereas all Provinciall Councils are members of the Council of State they may and ought to keep diligent correspondence with the same which is to be done after this manner Any opinion or opinions Legitimately proposed and debated at a Provinciall Council being there upon signed by the Strategus or any two of the Provosts may be transmitted unto the Council of State in Oceana and the Council of State proceeding upon the same in their naturall Course whether by their own Power if it be a matter within their instructions or by authority of the Senate thereupon consulted if it be a matter of State which is not in their instructions or by authority of the Senate and Command of the People if it be a matter of Law as for the Levys of Men or Money upon common use and safety shall returne such answers advice or Orders as in any of the ways mentioned shall be determined upon the Case The Provinciall Councils of Marpesia and Panopea respectively shall take especiall care that the Agrarian Laws as also all other Laws that be or shall from time to time be enacted by the Parliament of Oceana for either of them be duely put in execution They shall mannage and receive the Customs of either Nation for the Shipping of Oceana being the Common Guard they shall have a care that moderate and sufficient pay upon the respective Province be duely raysed for the support and maintenance of the Officers and Souldiers or Army of the same in the most effectuall constant and convenient way They shall receive the Regalia or publique Revenues of those Nations out of which every Counsellor shall have for his terme and unto his proper use the Summe of 500 l. per annum and the Strategus 500. l. as President besides his pay as Generall which shall be 1000 pounds the remainder to go unto the use of the Knights and Deputies of the respective Provinces to be paid if it will reach according unto the rates of Oceana if not by an equall distribution respectively or the overplus if there be any to be returned unto the Treasury of Oceana They shall mannage the Lands if there be any such holden in either of the Provinces by the Common-wealth of Oceana in Dominion and return the Rents into the Exchequer If the Commonwealth come to be possessed of richer provinces the pay of the Generall or Strategus and of the Council is may be respectively encreased The People for the rest shall elect their own Magistrates and be governed by their own Lawes having power also to appeale from their Native or Provinciall Magistrates if they please unto the People of Oceana And whereas there may be such as receiving Injury are not able to prosecute their appeales at so great a distance Eight Serjants at Law being sworne by the Commissioners of the Seale shall be sent by foure into each Province once in two yeares who dividing the same by Circuits shall heare such Causes and having gathered and introduced them shall returne unto the severall Appellants Gratis the Determinations and Decrees of the People in their severall Cases The terms of a Knight in a Provinciall Orbe as to domestick Magistracies shall be esteemed a Uacation and no barr unto present Election into any other Honour his Provinciall Magistracy being expired The Quorum of a Provinciall Council as also of every other Council or Assembly in Oceana shall in time of health consist of two parts in thrée of the whole number proper unto that Council or Assembly and in a time of Sicknesse of one part in three But of the Senate there can be no Quorum without thrée of the Signory nor of a Councill without two of the Provosts The Civil part of the Provinciall Orbe being declared by the foregoing Order The military part of the same is constituted by order 29 The Twenty Ninth Order Whereby the Stratiots of the third Essay having drawn the Gold Balls marked with the Letter M. and being ten Horse fifty Foot in a Tribe that is to say five hundred Horse and two thousand five hundred Foot in all the Tribes shall be delivered by the respective Conductors unto the Provinciall Strategus or Generall at such a time and place or Rendevouz as he shall appoint by Order and Certificate of his Election and the Strategus having received the Horse and Foot mentioned which are the third Classis of his Provinciall Guard or Army shall forthwith lead them away unto Marpesia where the Army consisting of thrée Classes each Classis containing thrée thousand Men whereof five hundred are Horse and receiving the new Strategus with the third Classis the old Strategus with the first Classis shall be dismist by the Provinciall Council The same method with the Stratiots of the Letter P. is to be observed for the Provinciall Orbe of Panopea and the Common-wealth coming to acquire new Provinces the Senate and the People may erect new Orbs in like manner consisting of greater or lesse numbers according as is required by the respective occasion If a Stratiot have once served his terme in a Provinciall Orbe and happen afterwards to draw the Letter of a Province at the Election of the second Essay he may refuse his Lot and if he refuse it the Censor of that Urn shall cause the files balloting at the same to make an hault and if the Stratiot produce the Certificate of his Strategus or Generall that he hath served his time accordingly the Censor throwing the Ball that he drew into the Urn againe and taking out a blank shall dismisse the Youth and cause the Ballot to procéed To perfect the whole structure of this Common-wealth some drections are given unto the third Essay or Army marching in order 30 The Thirtieth Order When thou goest to battel against thine enemies and seest Horses and Chariots and a people more then thou be not affraid of them for the Lord thy God is he that goeth with thee to fight for thee against thine enemies And when thou dividest the spoile it shall be as a statute and an Ordinance unto thee that as his part is that goeth down to the battle so shall his part be that tarryeth by the Stuffe that is as to the Commonwealth of Oceana The spoile taken of the enemy except Clothes Armes Horses Ammunition and Uictuall to be divided unto the Souldiery by the Strategus and the Polemarchs vpon the place according unto
their Discretion shall be delivered unto four Commissaries of the Spoiles elected and sworn by the Councill of War which Commissaries shall be allowd shipping by the State and convoyes according as occasion shall require by the Strategus to the end that having a bill of lading signed by thrée or more of the Polemarchs they may Ship and bring or cause such spoiles to be brought unto the Prize Office in Oceana where they shall be sold and the profit arising by such spoiles shall be divided into thrée parts whereof one shall go unto the Treasury another shall be paid to the Souldiery of this Nation a third unto the Auxiliaries at their return from their service provided that the said Auxiliaries be equall in number unto the proper forces of this Nation otherwise their share shall be so much lesse as they are fewer in number the rest of the two thirds to go unto the Officers and Souldiers of the proper forces and the spoiles so divided unto the proper forces shall be subdivided into thrée equall parts whereof one shall go unto the Officers and two unto the common Souldiers the like for the Auxiliaries and the share allotted unto the Officers shall be divided into foure equall parts whereof one shall go to the Strategus another unto the Polemarchs a third unto the Colonels and a fourth unto the Captaines Cornets Ensignes and under Officers receiving their share of the spoile as common Souldiers The like for the Auxiliaries and this upon paine in the case of failure of what the people of Oceana unto whom the Cognizance of Peculate or Crimes of this nature is properly appertaining shall adjudge or decrée Upon these three last orders the Archon seemed to bee haranging at the head of his Army in this manner My dear Lords and Excellent Patriots A Government of this make is a CoÌ„monwealth for increase Of those for preservation the inconveniences and frailties have been shewn their rootes are narrow such as do not runne have no fivers their tops weak and dangerously exposed unto the weather except you chance to finde one as Venice planted in a flowerpot and if shee grow shee grows top-heavy and falls too But you cannot plant an Oak in a flowerpot She must have earth for her root and heaven for her branches Imperium Oceano famam quae terminet astris Rome was said Mole sua ruere to bee broken by her own weight but Poetically For that weight by which she was pretended to bee ruined was supported in her Emperors by a farre slighter foundation And in the Common experience of good Architecture there is nothing more known than that buildings stand the firmer and the longer for their own weight nor ever swerve through any other internal cause than that their materials are corruptible but the people never dyes nor as a Political Body are subject unto any other corruption than that which deriveth from their Government Unlesse a man will deny the chain of causes in which hee denies God hee must also acknowledge the chain of effects wherefore there can bee no effect in Nature that is not from the first Cause and those successive lincks of the chain without which it could not have been Now except a man can shew the contrary in a Commonwealth if there bee no cause of corruption in the first make of it there can never bee any such effect Let no mans superstition impose prophanenesse upon this assertion for as Man is sinful and yet the world is perfect so may the Citizen bee sinfull and yet the Commonwealth bee perfect And as man seeing the World is perfect can never commit any such sin as can render it imperfect or bring it unto a natural dissolution so the Citizen where the common Wealth is perfect can never commit any such crime as can render it imperfect or bring it unto a natural dissolution To come unto experience Venice notwithstanding that wee have found some flaws in it is the only CoÌ„monwealth in the make wherof no man can find a cause of dissolution for which reason wee behold her albeit she consist of men that are not without sin at this day with one thousand years upon her back for any internal cause as young as fresh and free from decay or any appearance of it as shee was born but what ever in nature is not sensible of decay by the course of a thousand years is capable of the whole age of nature by which calculation for any check that I am able to give my self a Commonwealth rightly ordered may for any internal causes be as immortal or long-lived as the World But if this be true those Commonwealths that are naturally fallen must have derived their ruine from the rise of them Israel and Athens died not naturall but violent deaths in this manner the World is to dye wee are speaking of those causes of dissolution which are naturall unto government and they are but two either Contradiction or Inequality if a Common-wealth be a contradiction she must needs destroy her self and if she be unequal it tends to strife and strife to ruine By the former of these fell Lacedemon by the latter Rome Lacedemon being made altogether for war and yet not for increase her natural progresse became her natural dissolution and the building of her own victorious hand too heavy for her foundation so shee indeed fell by her own weight But Rome through her native Inequality which how it invâ—terated the bosomes of the Senate and the people each against other and even unto death hath been shewn at large Look well unto it my Lords for if there be a contradiction or inequality in your Commonwealth it must fall but if it have neither of these it hath no principle of mortality do not think mee impudent if this be truth I should commit a grosse indiscretion in concealing it Sure I am that Machiavil is for the immortality of a Commonwealth upon far weaker principles If a Commonwealth saith he were so happy as to be provided often with men that when she is swarving from her principles should reduce her unto her institution shee would be immortall But a Common-wealth as we have demonstrated swarveth not from her Principles but by and through her institution if she brought no byasse into the World with her her course for any internal cause must be streight forward as we see is that of Venice she cannot turn unto the right hand nor to the left but by some rubs which is not an internal but an external cause against such she can be no way fortifyed but through her situation as is Venice or through her Militia as was Rome by which examples a Common-wealth may be secure or those also Think me not vain for I cannot hold a Common-wealth that is rightly instituted can never swarve nor one that is not rightly instituted be secured from swarving by reduction unto her principles wherefore it is no less apparent in this place that Machiavil understood
not a Common-wealth as to the whole peice As where having told you That a Tribune or any other Citizen of Rome might propose a Law unto the people and debate it with them he adds this order was good while the people were good but when the people became evil it became most pernicious as if this Order through which with the like the people most apparently became evil could ever have been good or that the people or the Commonwealth could ever have become good by being reduced unto such principles as were the Original of their evil The disease of Rome was as hath been shewn from the native inequality of her ballance and no otherwise from the Empire of the World which then as this falling into one scale that of the Nobility an evil in such a Fabrick inevitable kickt out the People wherefore a man that could have made her to throw away the Empire of the World might in that have reduced her unto her principles and yet have been so far from rendering her immortal that going no farther hee should never have cured her But your C. W. is founded upon an equal Agrarian and if the earth be given unto the Sonnes of men this ballance is the ballance of justice such an one as in having due regard unto the different industry of different men yet faithfully judgeth the poor And the King that faithfully judgeth the poor his Throne shall be established for ever much more the Commonwealth seeing that equality which is the necessary dissolution of Monarchy is the generation the very life and soul of a Commonwealth And now if ever I may be excusable seeing that the Throne of a Commonwealth may be established for ever is consonant unto the holy Scriptures The ballance of a Commonwealth that is equal is of such nature that what ever falleth into her Empire must fall equally and if the whole earth fall into your scales it must fall equally so you may be a greater people and yet not swerve from your principles one hair Nay you will be so far from that that you must bring the world in such a case unto your ballance even unto the ballance of Justice But hearken My Lords Are we on earth Do we see the Sun or are we visiting those shady places which are fained by the Poets Continuò audita voces vagitus ingens These Gothick Empires that are yet in the world were at the first though they had legs of their own but an heavy and unweildy burden but their foundations being now broken the Iron of them entereth even into the souls of the oppressed and hear the voice of their Comforters My father hath chastised you with whips but I will chastise you with scorpions Hearken I say if thy brother cry unto thee in affliction wilt thou not hear him This is a Commonwealth of the fabrick that hath an open ear and a publick concernment she is not made for her self only but given as a Magistrate of God unto mankinde for the vindication of common Right and the law of Nature Wherefore saith Cicero of the like that of the Romans Nos magis patronatum orbis terrarum suscepimus quam Imperium we have rather undertaken the Patronage than the Empire of the world If you not regarding this example like some other Nations that are upon the point to smart for it shall having attained unto your own liberty bear the sword of your common Magistracy in vain sit still and fold your arms or which is worse let out the blood of your people unto Tyrants to be shed in the defence of their yoaks like water and so not only turn the grace of God into wantonness but his justice into wormwood You are not now making a Commonwealth but heaping coals of fire upon your own heads A Commonwealth I say of this make is a Minister of God upon earth to the end that the world may be governed with righteousness For which cause that I may come at length unto our present business the orders last rehearsed are buds of Empire such as with the blessing of God may spread the arms of your Commonwealth like an holy Asylum unto the distressed world and give the earth her Sabbath of years or rest from her labours under the shadow of your wings It is upon this point where the writings of Machiavil having for the rest excelled all other Authors come as far to excel themselves Commonwealths saith he have had three wayes of propagating themselves One after the manner of Monarchies by imposing the yoak which was the way of Athens and towards the latter times of Lacedemon Another by equal leagues which is the way of Switz I shall adde of Holland though since his time A third by unequal leagues which to the shame of the world was never practised nay nor so much as seen or minded by any other Commonwealth but that only of Rome They will each of them either for caution or imitation be worthy to be well weighed which is the proper work of this place Athens and Lacedemon have been the occasion of great scandal to the world in two or at least one of two regards The first their emulation which involved Greece in perpetual wars the second their way of propagation which by imposing yoaks upon others was plainly contradictory to their own principles For the first Governments bee they of what kinde soever if they bee planted too close are like trees that impatient in their growth to have it hindred eat out one another It was not unknown unto these in contemplation or if you read the story of Agesilaus in action that either of them with thirty thousand men might have mastered the East and certainly if the one had not stood in the others light Alexander had come too late to that end which was the means and would be if they were to live again of ruine at the least unto one of them wherefore with any man that understandeth the nature of Government this is excusable so it was between Oceana and Marpesia so it is between France and Spain though lesse excusable and so it ever will bee in like cases But to come unto the second occasion of scandal by them given which was in the way of their propagation it is not excusable for they brought their confederates under bondage by which means Athens gave occasion of the Peloponesian warre the wound of which shee dy'd stinking when Lacedemon taking the same infection from her carkasses soon followed Wherefore my Lords let these bee warnings unto you not to make that liberty which God hath given you a snare unto others in using this kind of inlargement of your selves The Second way of Propagation or inlargement used by Common-wealths is that of Switz and Holland equal leagues this though it be not otherwise mischievous is uselesse to the world and dangerous unto themselves uselesse unto the world for as the former governments were Storks these are blocks
have no sense of honour or concernment in the sufferings of others But as the Aetolians a state of the like fabrick were reproached by Phillip of Macedon prostrate themselves by letting out their arms unto the lusts of others while they have their own liberty barren and without legitimate issue I do not defame the people the Switz for valour have no superior the Hollander for industry no equal but themselves in the mean time shall so much the less excuse their Governments seeing that unto the Switz it is well enough known that the Ensigns of his Common-wealth have no other Motto then in te converte manus and that of the Hollander though hee swear more gold than the Spaniard digs let 's him languish in debt for shee her self lives upon charity these are dangerous unto themselves precarious governments such as do not command but beg their bread from Province to Province in Coats that being patched up of all colours are of none That their Cantons and Provinces are so many arrows is good but they are so many bows too which is naught Like unto these was the Commonwealth of the ancient Tuscans hung together like Bobbins without an hand to weave with them therefore easily overcome by the Romans though at that time for number a far lesse considerable people If your liberty be not a root that grows it will be a branch that withers which consideration brings mee unto the Paragon the Common-wealth of Rome The ways and means whereby the Romans acquired the Patronage and in that the Empire of the world were different according unto the different Condition of their Commonwealth in her rise and in her growth in her rise shee proceeded rather by Colonies in her growth by unequal Leagues Colonies without the bounds of Italy shee planted none such dispersion of the Roman Citizen as to plant him in forreign parts til the contrary interest of the Emperors brought in that practice was unlawful nor did shee ever demolish any City within that Compass or divest it of liberty but whereas the most of them were Commonwealths stirred up by emulation of her great felicity to war against her if shee overcame any she confiscated some part of their Lands that were the greatest incendiaries or causes of the trouble upon which shee planted Colonies of her own people preserving the Lands and Liberties for the rest unto the natives or inhabitants By this way of proceeding that I may bee brief as is possible she did many and great things For in confirming of Liberty shee propagated her Empire in holding the inhabitants from rebellion shee put a curb upon the incursion of Enemies in exonerating her self of the poorer sort shee multiplied her Citizens in rewarding her veterans shee rendered the rest lesse seditious and in acquiring unto her self the reverence of the Common parent shee from time to time became the Mother of New-born Cities In her farther growth the way of her propagation went more upon Leagues which for the first division were of two kindes Social and Provincial Again Social Leagues or Leagues of Society were of two kindes The first called Latinity or Latine The second Italian Right The League between the Romans and the Latins or Latine Right approached nearest unto Jus Quiritium the right of a native Roman The Man or the City that was honoured with this Right was Civitate donatus cum suffragio adopted a Citizen of Rome with the right of giving suffrage with the people in some cases as those of Confirmation of Law or Determination in Judicature if both the Consuls were agreed not otherwise wherefore that coming to little the greatest and most peculiar part of this Priviledge was that who had born Magistracy at least that of Aedile or Quaestor in any Latine City was by consequence of the same a Citizen of Rome at all points Italian Right was also donation of the City but without Suffrage they who were in either of these Leagues were governed by their own Laws and Magistrates having all the Rights as to liberty of Citizens of Rome yeelding and paying to the Commonwealth as head of the League and having the Conduct of all Affairs appertaining to the Common Cause such aid of Men and Monies as were particularly agreed upon the merit of the cause and specified in their respective Leagues whence such Leagues came to be called equal or unequal accordingly Provincial Leagues were of different extention according unto the Merit and Capacity of a conquered people but of one kinde for every Province was governed by Roman Magistrates as a Praetor or a Consul according to the dignity of the Province for the Civil Administration and conduct of the Provincial Army And a Quaestor for the gathering of the publick Revenue from which Magistrates a Province might appeal unto Rome For the better understanding of these particulars I shall exemplifie in as many of them as is needful And first in Macedon The Macedonians were thrice conquered by the Romans first under the conduct of T. Quintus Flaminius secondly under that of L. Aemilius Paulus and thirdly under that of Q. Caecilius Metellus thence called Macedonicus For the first time Pax petenti Philippo data Graeciae libertas Philip of Macedon who possessed of Acro Corinthus boasted no less than was true that he had Greece in fetters being overcome by Flaminius had his Kingdome restored unto him upon condition that he should forthwith set all the Cities which he held in Greece and in Asia at liberty and that he should not make war out of Macedon but by leave of the Senate of Rome which Philip having no other way to save any thing agreed should be done accordingly The Grecians being at this time assembled at the Istmian Games where the concourse was mighty great a Cryer appointed unto the office by Flaminius was heard among them proclaiming all Greece to be free to which the people being amazed at so hopeless a thing gave little credit till they received such testimony of the truth as put it past all doubt whereupon they fell immediately on running unto the Proconsul with Flowers and Garlands and such violent expressions of their admiration and joy as if Flaminius a young man about some thirty three had not also been very strong hee must have dyed of no other death then their kindness while every one striving to touch his hand they bore him up and down the field with an unruly throng full of such Ejaculations as these How Is there a people in the world that at their own Charge at their own Peril will fight for the liberty of another Did they live at the next door unto this fire Or what kinde of men are these whose business it is to pass Seas that the World may be governed with righteousness The Cities of Greece and of Asia shake off their Iron fetters at the voyce of a Cryer Was it madness to imagine such a thing and is it done O Vertue O Felicity O
his Embroidery My Lord Archons arrivall being known the Signory acompanyed by the Tribunes repaired unto him with the newes he had already heard by the Herrauld to which my Lord Strategus added That his Highnesse could not doubt upon the Demonstrations given but the minds of men were firme in the opinion that he could be no seeker of himselfe in the way of earthly Pompe and Glory and that the Gratitude of the Senate and the People could not therefore be understood to have any such reflection upon him But so it was that in regard of dangers abroad and Parties at home they durst not trust themselves without a standing Army nor a standing Army in any mans hands but those of his Highnesse The Archon made answer that he ever expected this would be the sense of the Senate and the People and this being their Sence he should have been sorry they had made choice of any other then himselfe for a standing Generall First because it could not have been more unto their owne safety and secondly because so long as they should have need of a standing Army his worke was not done That he would not dispute against the Judgement of the Senate and the People nor ought that to be Neverthelesse he made little doubt but experience would shew every Party their owne Interest in this Government and that better improved then they could expect from any other that mens animosityes should over ballance their Interest for any time was impossible that humor could never be lasting nor through the Constitution of the Govermment of any effect at the first charge For supposing the worst and that the People had chosen none other into the Senate and the Prerogative then royalists a matter of Fourteen hundred men must have taken their Oaths at their Election with an intention to go quite contrary not only to their Oaths so taken but to their own Interest for being estated in the Soveraign Power they must have decreed it from themselves such an example as for which there was never any experience nor can be any reason or holding it it must have done in their hands as well every whit as in any other Furthermore they must have removed the Government from a Foundation that apparantly would hold to set it upon another which apparantly would not hold which things if they could not come to passe the Senate and the People consisting wholly of Royallists much lesse by a parcel of them elected But if the feare of the Senate and of the People derived from a party without such an one as would not be elected nor engage themselves unto the Common-wealth by any oath this againe must be so Large as would go quite contrary to their owne Interest they being as free and as fully estated in their liberty as any other or so narrow that they could do no hurt while the People being in Arms and at the beck of the Strategus every Tribe would at any time make a better Army then such a Party and there being no parties at home fears from abroad would vanish But seeing it was otherwise determined by the Senate and the People the best course was to take that which they held the safest in which with his humble thanks for their great bounty he was resolved to serve them with all duty and obedience A very short time after the Royallists now equall Citizens made good the Archons Judgement there being no other that found any thing near so great a sweet in the Government For he who hath not been acquainted with affliction saith Seneca knoweth but half the things of this world Moreover they saw plainly that to restore the ancient Government they must cast up their Estates into the hands of three hundred men wherefore in case the Senate and the Prerogative consisting of thirteen hundred men had been all Royallists there must of necessity have been and be for ever one thousand against this or any such Vote But the Senate being informed by the Signory that the Archon had accepted of his Dignity and Office caused a third Chair to be set for his Highness between those of the Strategus and the Orator in the House the like at every Council to which he repaired not of necessity but at his pleasure being the best and as Argus not vainly said the greatest Prince in the World for in the Pomp of his Court he was not inferiour unto any and in the Field he was followed with a force that was formidable unto all Nor was there a cause in the Nature of this constitution to put him unto the charge of Guards spoyle his stomack or his sleep Insomuch as being handsomely disputed by the wits of the Academy whether my Lord Archon if he had been ambitious could have made himself so great it was carried clear in the Negative not only for the Reasons drawn from the present ballance which was Popular but putting the case the ballance had been Monarchicall For there be some Nations whereof this is one that will bear a Prince in a Common-wealth far higher then it is possible for them to bear a Monarch Spain looked upon the Prince of Aurange as her most formidable Enemy but if ever there be a Monarch in that Country he will be her best friend For whereas a Prince in a Common-wealth deriveth his greatnes from the root of the People a Monarch deriveth his from one of those ballances which nip them in the root by which means the Low Countreyes under a Monarch were poor and inconsiderable but in bearing a Prince could grow unto a miraculous height and give the glory of his actions by far the upper hand of the greatest King in Christendome There are Kings in Europe to whom a King of Oceana would be but a Petit Companion But the Prince of this Common-wealth is the terror and the Judge of them all That which my Lord Archon now minded most was the Agrarian upon which debate he uncessantly thrust the Senate and the Council of State to the end it might be planted upon some firm root as the main point and Basis of perpetuity unto the Common-wealth And these are some of the most remarkable Passages that happened in the first year of this Government About the latter end of the second the Army was disbanded but the Taxes continued at thirty thousand pounds a month for three years and an half By which means a piece of Artigliery was Planted and a portion of Land to the value of 50. l. a year purchased for the maintenance of the Games and of the Priz-arms for ever in each Hundred With the eleventh year of the Common-wealth the terme of the Excise allotted for the mayntenance of the Senate and the People and for the raysing of a Publique Revenue expired By which time the Exchequer over and above the annuall Sallaryes amounting unto three hundred thousand pounds accumulating every year out of one Million income Seaven hundred thousand pounds in Bancho brought it