Chapter IV: Part I: The Preliminaries (3)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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