Josephus, claims kindred of that) have great resemblance, were each of
them equal in their agrarian, and unequal in their rotation, especially
Israel, where the Sanhedrim, or Senate, first elected by the people, as
appears by the words of Moses, took upon them ever after, without any
precept of God, to substitute their successors by ordination; which
having been there of civil use, as excommunication, community of goods,
and other customs of the Essenes, who were many of them converted, came
afterward to be introduced into the Christian Church. And the election
of the judge, suffes, or dictator, was irregular, both for the occasion,
the term, and the vacation of that magistracy. As you find in the book
of Judges, where it is often repeated, that in those days there was no
king in Israel--that is, no judge; and in the first of Samuel, where Eli
judged Israel forty years, and Samuel, all his life. In Lacedaemon the
election of the Senate being by suffrage of the people, though for life,
was not altogether so unequal, yet the hereditary right of kings, were
it not for the agrarian, had ruined her.
Athens and Rome were unequal as to their agrarian, that of Athens being
infirm, and this of Rome none at all; for if it were more anciently
carried it was never observed. Whence, by the time of Tiberius Gracchus,
the nobility had almost eaten the people quite out of their lands,
which they held in the occupation of tenants and servants, whereupon the
remedy being too late, and too vehemently applied, that commonwealth was
ruined.
These also were unequal in their rotation, but in a contrary manner.
Athens, in regard that the Senate (chosen at once by lot, not by
suffrage, and changed every year, not in part, but in the whole)
consisted not of the natural aristocracy, nor sitting long enough to
understand or to be perfect in their office, had no sufficient authority
to restrain the people from that perpetual turbulence in the end, which
was their ruin, notwithstanding the efforts of Nicias, who did all a man
could do to help it. But as Athens, by the headiness of the people, so
Rome fell by the ambition of the nobility, through the want of an equal
rotation; which, if the people had got into the Senate, and timely
into the magistracies (whereof the former was always usurped by the
patricians, and the latter for the most part) they had both carried and
held their agrarian, and that had rendered that commonwealth immovable.
But let a commonwealth be equal or unequal, it must consist, as has been
shown by reason and all experience, of the three general orders; that is
to say, of the Senate debating and proposing, of the people resolving,
and of the magistracy executing. Wherefore I can never wonder enough
at Leviathan, who, without any reason or example, will have it that a
commonwealth consists of a single person, or of a single assembly; nor
can I sufficiently pity those “thousand gentlemen, whose minds, which
otherwise would have wavered, he has framed (as is affirmed by himself)
in to a conscientious obedience (for so he is pleased to call it) of
such a government.”
But to finish this part of the discourse, which I intend for as
complete an epitome of ancient prudence, and in that of the whole art of
politics, as I am able to frame in so short a time:
The two first orders, that is to say, the Senate and the people, are
legislative, whereunto answers that part of this science which by
politicians is entitled “of laws;” and the third order is executive,
to which answers that part of the same science which is styled “of the
frame and course of courts or judicatories.” A word to each of these
will be necessary.
And first for laws: they are either ecclesiastical or civil, such as
concern religion or government.
Laws, ecclesiastical, or such as concern religion, according to
the universal course of ancient prudence, are in the power of the
magistrate; but, according to the common practice of modern prudence,
since the papacy, torn out of his hands.
But, as a government pretending to liberty, and yet suppressing
liberty of conscience (which, because religion not according to a
man’s conscience can to him be none at all, is the main) must be a
contradiction, so a man that, pleading for the liberty of private
conscience, refuses liberty to the national conscience, must be absurd.
A commonwealth is nothing else but the national conscience. And if the
conviction of a man’s private conscience produces his private religion,
the conviction of the national conscience must produce a national
religion. Whether this be well reasoned, as also whether these two
may stand together, will best be shown by the examples of the ancient
commonwealths taken in their order.
In that of Israel the government of the national religion appertained
not to the priests and Levites, otherwise than as they happened to be
of the Sanhedrim, or Senate, to which they had no right at all but
by election. It is in this capacity therefore that the people are
commanded, under pain of death, “to hearken to them, and to do according
to the sentence of the law which they should teach;” but in Israel the
law ecclesiastical and civil was the same, therefore the Sanhedrim,
having the power of one, had the power of both. But as the national
religion appertained to the jurisdiction of the Sanhedrim, so the
liberty of conscience appertained, from the same date, and by the same
right, to the prophets and their disciples; as where it is said, “I will
raise up a prophet; and whoever will not hearken to my words which he
shall speak in my name, I will require it of him.” The words relate to
prophetic right, which was above all the orders of this commonwealth;
whence Elijah not only refused to obey the King, but destroyed his
messengers with fire. And whereas it was not lawful by the national
religion to sacrifice in any other place than the Temple, a prophet was
his own temple, and might sacrifice where he would, as Elijah did in
Mount Carmel. By this right John the Baptist and our Saviour, to whom it
more particularly related, had their disciples, and taught the people,
whence is derived our present right of gathered congregations;
wherefore the Christian religion grew up according to the orders of
the Commonwealth of Israel, and not against them. Nor was liberty of
conscience infringed by this government, till the civil liberty of
the same was lost, as under Herod, Pilate, and Tiberius, a three-piled
tyranny.
To proceed, Athens preserved her religion, by the testimony of Paul,
with great superstition: if Alcibiades, that atheistical fellow had not
showed them a pair of heels, they had shaven off his head for shaving
their Mercuries, and making their gods look ridiculously upon them
without beards. Nevertheless, if Paul reasoned with them, they loved
news, for which he was the more welcome; and if he converted Dionysius
the Areopagite, that is, one of the senators, there followed neither any
hurt to him, nor loss of honor to Dionysius. And for Rome, if Cicero,
in his most excellent book “De Natura Deorum,” overthrew the national
religion of that commonwealth, he was never the further from being
consul. But there is a meanness and poorness in modern prudence, not
only to the damage of civil government, but of religion itself; for
to make a man in matter of religion, which admits not of sensible
demonstration (jurare in verba magistri), engage to believe no otherwise
than is believed by my lord bishop, or Goodman Presbyter is a pedantism
that has made the sword to be a rod in the hands of schoolmasters; by
which means, whereas the Christian religion is the furthest of any
from countenancing war, there never was a war of religion but since
Christianity, for which we are beholden to the Pope; for the Pope not
giving liberty of conscience to princes and commonwealths, they cannot
give that to their subjects which they have not themselves, whence
both princes and subjects, either through his instigation or their own
disputes, have introduced that execrable custom, never known in the
world before, of fighting for religion, and denying the magistrate to
have any jurisdiction concerning it, whereas the magistrate’s losing the
power of religion loses the liberty of conscience, which in that case
has nothing to protect it. But if the people be otherwise taught,
it concerns them to look about them, and to distinguish between the
shrieking of the lapwing and the voice of the turtle.
To come to civil laws. If they stand one way and the balance another,
it is the case of a government which of necessity must be new modelled;
wherefore your lawyers, advising you upon the like occasions to fit your
government to their laws, are no more to be regarded than your tailor
if he should desire you to fit your body to his doublet. There is
also danger in the plausible pretence of reforming the law, except the
government be first good, in which case it is a good tree, and (trouble
not yourselves overmuch) brings not forth evil fruit; otherwise, if
the tree be evil, you can never reform the fruit, or if a root that is
naught bring forth fruit of this kind that seems to be good, take the
more heed, for it is the ranker poison. It was nowise probable, if
Augustus had not made excellent laws, that the bowels of Rome could have
come to be so miserably eaten out by the tyranny of Tiberius and his
successors. The best rule as to your laws in general is that they be
few. Rome, by the testimony of Cicero, Was best governed under those of
the twelve tables; and by that of Tacitus, Plurimoe leges, corruptissima
respublica. You will be told that where the laws be few they leave much
to arbitrary power; but where they be many, they leave more, the laws
in this case, according to Justinian and the best lawyers, being as
litigious as the suitors. Solon made few, Lycurgus fewer, laws; and
commonwealths have the fewest at this day of all other governments.
Now to conclude this part with a word de judiciis, or of the
constitution or course of courts; it is a discourse not otherwise
capable of being well managed but by particular examples, both the
constitution and course of courts being divers in different governments,
but best beyond compare in Venice, where they regard not so much the
arbitrary power of their courts as the constitution of them, whereby
that arbitrary power being altogether unable to retard or do hurt to
business, produces and must produce the quickest despatch, and the most
righteous dictates of justice that are perhaps in human nature. The
manner I shall not stand in this place to describe, because it is
exemplified at large in the judicature of the people of Oceana. And
thus much of ancient prudence, and the first branch of this preliminary
discourse.
THE SECOND PART OF THE PRELIMINARIES
In the second part I shall endeavor to show the rise, progress, and
declination of modern prudence.
The date of this kind of policy is to be computed, as was shown, from
those inundations of Goths, Vandals, Huns, and Lombards that overwhelmed
the Roman Empire. But as there is no appearance in the bulk or
constitution of modern prudence, that it should ever have been able to
come up and grapple with the ancient, so something of necessity must
have interposed whereby this came to be enervated, and that to receive
strength and encouragement. And this was the execrable reign of the
Roman emperors taking rise from (that felix scelus) the arms of
Caesar, in which storm the ship of the Roman Commonwealth was forced
to disburden itself of that precious freight, which never since could
emerge or raise its head but in the Gulf of Venice.
It is said in Scripture, “Thy evil is of thyself, O Israel!” to which
answers that of the moralists, “None is hurt but by himself,” as also
the whole matter of the politics; at present this example of the Romans,
who, through a negligence committed in their agrarian laws, let in the
sink of luxury, and forfeited the inestimable treasure of liberty for
themselves and their posterity.
Their agrarian laws were such whereby their lands ought to have been
divided among the people, either without mention of a colony, in which
case they were not obliged to change their abode; or with mention and
upon condition of a colony, in which case they were to change their
abode, and leaving the city, to plant themselves upon the lands so
assigned. The lands assigned, or that ought to have been assigned, in
either of these ways, were of three kinds: such as were taken from the
enemy and distributed to the people; or such as were taken from the
enemy, and, under color of being reserved to the public use, were
through stealth possessed by the nobility; or such as were bought with
the public money to be distributed. Of the laws offered in these cases,
those which divided the lands taken from the enemy, or purchased with
the public money, never occasioned any dispute; but such as drove at
dispossessing the nobility of their usurpations, and dividing the common
purchase of the sword among the people, were never touched but they
caused earthquakes, nor could they ever be obtained by the people; or
being obtained, be observed by the nobility, who not only preserved
their prey, but growing vastly rich upon it, bought the people by
degrees quite out of those shares that had been conferred upon them.
This the Gracchi coming too late to perceive found the balance of the
commonwealth to be lost; but putting the people (when they had least
force) by forcible means upon the recovery of it, did ill, seeing
it neither could nor did tend to any more than to show them by worse
effects that what the wisdom of their leaders had discovered was true.
For quite contrary to what has happened in Oceana, where, the balance
falling to the people, they have overthrown the nobility, that nobility
of Rome, under the conduct of Sylla, overthrew the people and the
commonwealth; seeing Sylla first introduced that new balance which was
the foundation of the succeeding monarchy, in the plantation of military
colonies, instituted by his distribution of the conquered lands, not now
of enemies, but of citizens, to forty-seven legions of his soldiers;
so that how he came to be perpetual dictator, or other magistrates to
succeed him in like power, is no miracle.
These military colonies (in which manner succeeding emperors continued,
as Augustus by the distribution of the veterans, whereby he had overcome
Brutus and Cassius to plant their soldiery) consisted of such as I
conceive were they that are called milites beneficiarii; in regard that
the tenure of their lands was by way of benefices, that is, for life,
and upon condition of duty or service in the war upon their own
charge. These benefices Alexander Severus granted to the heirs of the
incumbents, but upon the same conditions. And such was the dominion by
which the Roman emperors gave their balance. But to the beneficiaries,
as was no less than necessary for the safety of the prince, a matter of
8,000 by the example of Augustus were added, which departed not from
his sides, but were his perpetual guard, called Pretorian bands; though
these, according to the incurable flaw already observed in this kind of
government, became the most frequent butchers of their lords that are
to be found in story. Thus far the Roman monarchy is much the same with
that at this day in Turkey, consisting of a camp and a horse-quarter; a
camp in regard of the Spahis and Janizaries, the perpetual guard of the
prince, except they also chance to be liquorish after his blood; and a
horse-quarter in regard of the distribution of his whole land to tenants
for life, upon condition of continual service, or as often as they shall
be commanded at their own charge by timars, being a word which they
say signifies benefices, that it shall save me a labor of opening the
government.
But the fame of Mahomet and his prudence is especially founded in this,
that whereas the Roman monarchy, except that of Israel, was the most
imperfect, the Turkish is the most perfect that ever was. Which
happened in that the Roman (as the Israelitish of the Sanhedrim and
the congregation) had a mixture of the Senate and the people; and the
Turkish is pure. And that this was pure, and the other mixed, happened
not through the wisdom of the legislators, but the different genius of
the nations; the people of the Eastern parts, except the Israelites,
which is to be attributed to their agrarian, having been such as scarce
ever knew any other condition than that of slavery; and these of the
Wester having ever had such a relish of liberty, as through what despair
soever could never be brought to stand still while the yoke was putting
on their necks, but by being fed with some hopes of reserving to
themselves some part of their freedom.
Wherefore Julius Caesar (saith Suetonius) contented himself in naming
half the magistrates, to leave the rest to the suffrage of the people.
And Maecenas, though he would not have Augustus to give the people their
liberty, would not have him take it quite away. Whence this empire,
being neither hawk nor buzzard, made a flight accordingly; and the
prince being perpetually tossed (having the avarice of the soldiery on
this hand to satisfy upon the people, and the Senate and the people on
the other to be defended from the soldiery), seldom died any other
death than by one horn of this dilemma, as is noted more at large by
Machiavel.
But the Pretorian bands, those bestial executioners of their captain’s
tyranny upon others, and of their own upon him, having continued from
the time of Augustus, were by Constantine the Great (incensed against
them for taking part with his adversary Maxentius) removed from their
strong garrison which they held in Rome, and distributed into divers
provinces. The benefices of the soldiers that were hitherto held for
life and upon duty, were by this prince made hereditary, so that
the whole foundation whereupon this empire was first built being now
removed, shows plainly that the emperors must long before this have
found out some other way of support; and this was by stipendiating the
Goths, a people that, deriving their roots from the northern parts of
Germany, or out of Sweden, had, through their victories obtained against
Domitian, long since spread their branches to so near a neighborhood
with the Roman territories that they began to overshadow them. For the
emperors making use of them in their armies, as the French do at this
day of the Switz, gave them that under the notion of a stipend, which
they received as tribute, coming, if there were any default in the
payment, so often to distrain for it, that in the time of Honorius
they sacked Rome, and possessed themselves of Italy. And such was the
transition of ancient into modern prudence, or that breach, which being
followed in every part of the Roman Empire with inundations of Vandals,
Huns, Lombards, Franks, Saxons, overwhelmed ancient languages, learning,
prudence, manners, cities, changing the names of rivers, countries,
seas, mountains, and men; Camillus, Caesar, and Pompey, being come to
Edmund, Richard, and Geoffrey.
To open the groundwork or balance of these new politicians: “Feudum,”
says Calvin the lawyer, “is a Gothic word of divers significations;
for it is taken either for war, or for a possession of conquered lands,
distributed by the victor to such of his captains and soldiers as had
merited in his wars, upon condition to acknowledge him to be their
perpetual lord, and themselves to be his subjects.”
Of these there were three kinds or orders: the first of nobility
distinguished by the titles of dukes, marquises, earls, and these
being gratified with the cities, castles, and villages of the conquered
Italians, their feuds participated of royal dignity, and were called
regalia, by which they had right to coin money, create magistrates, take
toll, customs, confiscations, and the like.
Feuds of the second order were such as, with the consent of the King,
were bestowed by these feudatory princes upon men of inferior quality,
called their barons, on condition that next to the King they should
defend the dignities and fortunes of their lords in arms.
The lowest order of feuds were such, as being conferred by those of the
second order upon private men, whether noble not noble, obliged them in
the like duty to their superiors; the were called vavasors. And this is
the Gothic balance, by which all the kingdoms this day in Christendom
were at first erected; for which cause, if I had time, I should open in
this place the Empire of Germany, and the Kingdoms of France, Spain, and
Poland; but so much as has been said being sufficient for the discovery
of the principles of modern prudence in general, I shall divide the
remainder of my discourse, which is more particular, into three parts:
The first, showing the constitution of the late monarchy of Oceana;
The second, the dissolution of the same; and
The third, the generation of the present commonwealth.
The constitution of the late monarchy of Oceana is to be considered
in relation to the different nations by whom it has been successively
subdued and governed. The first of these were the Romans, the second the
Teutons, the third the Scandians, and the fourth the Neustrians.
The government of the Romans, who held it as a province, I shall omit,
because I am to speak of their provincial government in another place,
only it is to be remembered here, that if we have given over running up
and down naked, and with dappled hides, learned to write and read, and
to be instructed with good arts, for all these we are beholden to the
Romans, either immediately or mediately by the Teutons; for that
the Teutons had the arts from no other hand is plain enough by their
language, which has yet no word to signify either writing or reading,
but what is derived from the Latin. Furthermore, by the help of these
arts so learned, we have been capable of that religion which we have
long since received; wherefore it seems to me that we ought not to
detract from the memory of the Romans, by whose means we are, as it
were, of beasts become men, and by whose means we might yet of obscure
and ignorant men (if we thought not too well of ourselves) become a wise
and a great people.
The Romans having governed Oceana provincially, the Teutons were the
first that introduced the form of the late monarchy. To these succeeded
the Scandians, of whom (because their reign was short, as also because
they made little alteration in the government as to the form) I shall
take no notice. But the Teutons going to work upon the Gothic balance,
divided the whole nation into three sorts of feuds, that of ealdorman,
that of king’s thane, and that of middle thane.
When the kingdom was first divided into precincts will be as hard to
show as when it began first to be governed. It being impossible that
there should be any government without some division. The division that
was in use with the Teutons was by counties, and every county had either
its ealdorman or high reeve. The title of ealdorman came in time to
eorl, or erl, and that of high reeve to high sheriff.
Earl of the shire or county denoted the king’s thane, or tenant by grand
sergeantry or knight’s service, in chief or in capite; his possessions
were sometimes the whole territory from whence he had his denomination,
that is, the whole county; sometimes more than one county, and sometimes
less, the remaining part being in the crown. He had also sometimes a
third, or some other customary part of the profits of certain cities,
boroughs, or other places within his earldom. For an example of the
possessions of earls in ancient times, Ethelred had to him and his heirs
the whole Kingdom of Mercia, containing three or four counties; and
there were others that had little less.
King’s thane was also an honorary title, to which he was qualified
that had five hides of land held immediately of the King by service of
personal attendance; insomuch that if a churl or countryman had thriven
to this proportion, having a church, a kitchen, a bell-house (that is,
a hall with a bell in it to call his family to dinner), a borough-gate
with a seat (that is, a porch) of his own, and any distinct office in
the King’s court, then was he the King’s thane. But the proportion of a
hide-land, otherwise called caruca, or a plough-land, is difficult to
be understood, because it was not certain; nevertheless it is generally
conceived to be so much as may be managed with one plough, and would
yield the maintenance of the same, with the appurtenances in all kinds.
The middle thane was feudal, but not honorary; he was also called a
vavasor, and his lands a vavasory, which held of some mesne lord, and
not immediately of the King.
Possessions and their tenures, being of this nature, show the balance
of the Teuton monarchy, wherein the riches of earls were so vast that to
arise from the balance of their dominion to their power, they were
not only called reguli, or little kings, but were such indeed; their
jurisdiction being of two sorts, either that which was exercised by them
in the court of their countries, or in the high court of the kingdom.
In the territory denominating an earl, if it were all his own, the
courts held, and the profits of that jurisdiction were to his own
use and benefit. But if he had but some part of his county, then his
jurisdiction and courts, saving perhaps in those possessions that were
his own, were held by him to the King’s use and benefit; that is, he
commonly supplied the office which the sheriffs regularly executed in
counties that had no earls, and whence they came to be called viscounts.
The court of the county that had an earl was held by the earl and the
bishop of the diocese, after the manner of the sheriffs’ turns to this
day; by which means both the ecclesiastical and temporal laws were given
in charge together to the country. The causes of vavasors or vavasories
appertained to the cognizance of this court, where wills were proved,
judgment and execution given, cases criminal and civil determined.
The King’s thanes had the like jurisdiction in their thane lands as
lords in their manors, where they also kept courts.
Besides these in particular, both the earls and King’s thanes, together
with the bishops, abbots, and vavasors, or middle thanes, had in the
high court or parliament in the kingdom a more public jurisdiction,
consisting first of deliberative power for advising upon and assenting
to new laws; secondly, giving counsel in matters of state and thirdly,
of judicature upon suits and complaints. I shall not omit to enlighten
the obscurity of these times, in which there is little to be found of
a methodical constitution of this high court, by the addition of an
argument, which I conceive to bear a strong testimony to itself, though
taken out of a late writing that conceals the author. “It is well
known,” says he, “that in every quarter of the realm a great many
boroughs do yet send burgesses to the parliament which nevertheless be
so anciently and so long since decayed and gone to naught, that they
cannot be showed to have been of any reputation since the Conquest, much
less to have obtained any such privilege by the grant of any succeeding
king: wherefore these must have had this right by more ancient usage,
and before the Conquest, they being unable now to show whence they
derived it.”
This argument, though there be more, I shall pitch upon as sufficient to
prove: First, that the lower sort of the people had right to session
in Parliament during the time of the Teutons. Secondly, that they were
qualified to the same by election in their boroughs, and if knights of
the shire, as no doubt they are, be as ancient in the counties. Thirdly
if it be a good argument to say that the commons during the reign of the
Teutons were elected into Parliament because they are so now, and no man
can show when this custom began, I see not which way it should be an ill
one to say that the commons during the reign of the Teutons constituted
also a distinct house because they do so now, unless any man can show
that they did ever sit in the same house with the lords. Wherefore
to conclude this part, I conceive for these, and other reasons to be
mentioned hereafter, that the Parliament of the Teutons consisted of the
King, the lords spiritual and temporal, and the commons of the nation,
notwithstanding the style of divers acts of Parliament, which runs,
as that of Magna Charta, in the King’s name only, seeing the same was
nevertheless enacted by the King, peers, and commons of the land, as is
testified in those words by a subsequent act.
The monarchy of the Teutons had stood in this posture about 220 years;
when Turbo, Duke of Neustria, making his claim to the crown of one of
their kings that died childless, followed it with successful arms, and,
being possessed of the kingdom, used it as conquered, distributing the
earldoms, thane-lands, bishoprics, and prelacies of the whole realm
among his Neustrians. From this time the earl came to be called comes,
consul, and dux, though consul and dux grew afterward out of use; the
King’s thanes came to be called barons, and their lands baronies;
the middle thane holding still of a mesne lord, retained the name of
vavasor.
The earl or comes continued to have the third part of the pleas of the
county paid to him by the sheriff or vice--comes, now a distinct officer
in every county depending upon the King; saving that such earls as had
their counties to their own use were now counts-palatine, and had under
the King regal jurisdiction; insomuch that they constituted their own
sheriffs, granted pardons, and issued writs in their own names; nor did
the King’s writ of ordinary justice run in their dominions till a late
statute, whereby much of this privilege was taken away.
For barons they came from henceforth to be in different times of three
kinds: barons by their estates and tenures, barons by writ, and barons
created by letters-patent. From Turbo the first to Adoxus the seventh
king from the Conquest, barons had their denomination from their
possessions and tenures. And these were either spiritual or temporal;
for not only the thanelands, but the possessions of bishops, as also of
some twenty six abbots, and two priors, were now erected into baronies,
whence the lords spiritual that had suffrage in the Teuton Parliament as
spiritual lords came to have it in the Neustrian Parliament as barons,
and were made subject, which they had not formerly been, to knights’
service in chief. Barony coming henceforth to signify all honorary
possessions as well of earls as barons, and baronage to denote all
kinds of lords as well spiritual as temporal having right to sit
in Parliament, the baronies in this sense were sometimes more, and
sometimes fewer, but commonly about 200 or 250, containing in them a
matter of 60,000 feuda militum, or knights’ fees, whereof some 28,000
were in the clergy.
It is ill-luck that no man can tell what the land of a knight’s
fee, reckoned in some writs at £40 a year, and in others at £10, was
certainly worth, for by such a help we might have exactly demonstrated
the balance of this government. But, says Coke, it contained twelve
plough-lands, and that was thought to be the most certain account. But
this again is extremely uncertain; for one plough out of some land that
was fruitful might work more than ten out of some other that was
barren. Nevertheless, seeing it appears by Bracton, that of earldoms and
baronies it was wont to be said that the whole kingdom was composed, as
also that these, consisting of 60,000 knights’ fees, furnished 60,000
men for the King’s service, being the whole militia of this monarchy,
it cannot be imagined that the vavasories or freeholds in the people
amounted to any considerable proportion. Wherefore the balance and
foundation of this government were in the 60,000 knights’ fees, and
these being possessed by the 250 lords, it was a government of the few,
or of the nobility, wherein the people might also assemble, but could
have no more than a mere name. And the clergy, holding a third of the
whole nation, as is plain by the Parliament-roll, it is an absurdity
(seeing the clergy of France came first through their riches to be a
state of that kingdom) to acknowledge the people to have been a state
of this realm, and not to allow it to the clergy, who were so much more
weighty in the balance, which is that of all other whence a state or
order in a government is denominated. Wherefore this monarchy consisted
of the King, and of the three ordines regni, or estates, the lords
spiritual and temporal, and the commons; it consisted of these, I say,
as to the balance, though, during the reign of some of these kings, not
as to the administration.
For the ambition of Turbo, and some of those that more immediately
succeeded him, to be absolute princes, strove against the nature of
their foundation, and, inasmuch as he had divided almost the whole
realm among his Neustrians, with some encouragement for a while. But
the Neustrians, while they were but foreign plants, having no security
against the natives, but in growing up by their princes’ sides, were no
sooner well rooted in their vast dominions than they came up according
to the infallible consequence of the balance domestic, and, contracting
the national interest of the baronage, grew as fierce in the vindication
of the ancient rights and liberties of the same, as if they had been
always natives: whence, the kings being as obstinate on the one side for
their absolute power, as these on the other for their immunities, grew
certain wars, which took their denomination from the barons.
This fire about the middle of the reign of Adoxus began to break out.
And whereas the predecessors of this King had divers times been forced
to summon councils resembling those of the Teutons, to which the lords
only that were barons by dominion and tenure had hitherto repaired,
Adoxus, seeing the effects of such dominion, began first not to call
such as were barons by writ (for that was according to the practice of
ancient times), but to call such by writs as were otherwise no barons;
by which means, striving to avoid the consequence of the balance, in
coming unwillingly to set the government straight, he was the first that
set it awry. For the barons in his reign, and his successors, having
vindicated their ancient authority, restored the Parliament with all
the rights and privileges of the same, saving that from thenceforth the
kings had found out a way whereby to help themselves against the mighty
by creatures of their own, and such as had no other support but by their
favor.. By which means this government, being indeed the masterpiece of
modern prudence, has been cried up to the skies, as the only invention
whereby at once to maintain the sovereignty of a prince and the
liberty of the people. Whereas, indeed, it has been no other than a
wrestling-match, wherein the nobility, as they have been stronger, have
thrown the King, or the King, if he has been stronger, has thrown the
nobility; or the King, where he has had a nobility, and could bring
them to his party has thrown the people, as in France and Spain; or
the people, where they have had no nobility, or could get them to be of
their party, have thrown the King, as in Holland, and of later times in
Oceana.
But they came not to this strength, but by such approaches and degrees
as remain to be further opened. For whereas the barons by writ, as the
sixty-four abbots and thirty-six priors that were so called, were but
pro temp ore, Dicotome, being the twelfth king from the Conquest, began
to make barons by letters-patent, with the addition of honorary pensions
for the maintenance of their dignities to them and their heirs; so that
they were hands in the King’s purse and had no shoulders for his throne.
Of these, when the house of peers came once to be full, as will be seen
hereafter, there was nothing more empty. But for the present, the throne
having other supports, they did not hurt that so much as they did
the King; for the old barons, taking Dicotome’s prodigality to such
creatures so ill that they deposed him, got the trick of it, and never
gave over setting up and pulling down their kings according to their
various interests, and that faction of the White and Red, into which
they have been thenceforth divided, till Panurgus, the eighteenth king
from the Conquest, was more by their favor than his right advanced to
the crown. This King, through his natural subtlety, reflecting at once
upon the greatness of their power, and the inconstancy of their favor,
began to find another flaw in this kind of government, which is also
noted by Machiavel namely, that a throne supported by a nobility is not
so hard to be ascended as kept warm. Wherefore his secret jealousy, lest
the dissension of the nobility, as it brought him in might throw him
out, made him travel in ways undiscovered by them, to ends as little
foreseen by himself, while to establish his own safety, he, by mixing
water with their wine, first began to open those sluices that have since
overwhelmed not the King only, but the throne. For whereas a nobility
strikes not at the throne, without which they cannot subsist, but at
some king that they do not like, popular power strikes through the King
at the throne, as that which is incompatible with it. Now that Panurgus,
in abating the power of the nobility, was the cause whence it came to
fall into the hands of the people, appears by those several statutes
that were made in his reign, as that for population, those against
retainers, and that for alienations.
By the statute of population, all houses of husbandry that were used
with twenty acres of ground and upward, were to be maintained and kept
up forever with a competent proportion of land laid to them, and in no
wise, as appears by a subsequent statute, to be severed. By which means
the houses being kept up, did of necessity enforce dwellers; and the
proportion of land to be tilled being kept up, did of necessity enforce
the dweller not to be a beggar or cottager, but a man of some substance,
that might keep hinds and servants and set the plough a-going. This
did mightily concern, says the historian of that prince, the might and
manhood of the kingdom, and in effect amortize a great part of the lands
to the hold and possession of the yeomanry or middle people, who living
not in a servile or indigent fashion, were much unlinked from dependence
upon their lords, and living in a free and plentiful manner, became
a more excellent infantry, but such a one upon which the lords had so
little power, that from henceforth they may be computed to have been
disarmed.
And as they had lost their infantry after this manner, so their cavalry
and commanders were cut off by the statute of retainers; for whereas it
was the custom of the nobility to have younger brothers of good houses,
mettled fellows, and such as were knowing in the feats of arms about
them, they who were longer followed with so dangerous a train, escaped
not such punishments as made them take up.
Henceforth the country lives and great tables of the nobility, which
no longer nourished veins that would bleed for them, were fruitless and
loathsome till they changed the air, and of princes became courtiers;
where their revenues, never to have been exhausted by beef and mutton,
were found narrow, whence followed racking of rents, and at length sale
of lands, the riddance through the statute of alienations being rendered
far more quick and facile than formerly it had been through the new
invention of entails.
To this it happened that Coraunus, the successor of that King,
dissolving the abbeys, brought, with the declining state of the
nobility, so vast a prey to the industry of the people, that the balance
of the commonwealth was too apparently in the popular party to be
unseen by the wise Council of Queen Parthenia, who, converting her reign
through the perpetual love tricks that passed between her and her people
into a kind of romance, wholly neglected the nobility. And by these
degrees came the House of Commons to raise that head, which since has
been so high and formidable to their princes that they have looked
pale upon those assemblies. Nor was there anything now wanting to the
destruction of the throne, but that the people, not apt to see their own
strength, should be put to feel it; when a prince, as stiff in disputes
as the nerve of monarchy was grown slack, received that unhappy
encouragement from his clergy which became his utter ruin, while
trusting more to their logic than the rough philosophy of his
Parliament, it came to an irreparable breach; for the house of peers,
which alone had stood in this gap, now sinking down between the King and
the commons, showed that Crassus was dead and the isthmus broken. But
a monarchy, divested of its nobility, has no refuge under heaven but an
army. Wherefore the dissolution of this government caused the war, not
the war the dissolution of this government.
Of the King’s success with his arms it is not necessary to give any
further account than that they proved as ineffectual as his nobility;
but without a nobility or an army (as has been shown) there can be no
monarchy. Wherefore what is there in nature that can arise out of these
ashes but a popular government, or a new monarchy to be erected by the
victorious army?
To erect a monarchy, be it never so new, unless like Leviathan you can
hang it, as the country-fellow speaks, by geometry (for what else is it
to say, that every other man must give up his will to the will of
this one man without any other foundation?), it must stand upon old
principles--that is, upon a nobility or an army planted on a due balance
of dominion. Aut viam inveniam aut faciam, was an adage of Caesar, and
there is no standing for a monarchy unless it finds this balance, or
makes it. If it finds it, the work is done to its hand; for, where there
is inequality of estates, there must be inequality of power; and where
there is inequality of power, there can be no commonwealth. To make it,
the sword must extirpate out of dominion all other roots of power, and
plant an army upon that ground. An army may be planted nationally or
provincially. To plant it nationally, it must be in one of the four
ways mentioned, that is, either monarchically in part, as the Roman
beneficiarii; or monarchically, in the whole, as the Turkish Timariots;
aristocratically that is, by earls and barons, as the Neustrians were
planted by Turbo; or democratically, that is, by equal lots, as the
Israelitish army in the land of Canaan by Joshua. In every one of these
ways there must not only be confiscations, but confiscations to such a
proportion as may answer to the work intended.
Confiscation of a people that never fought against you, but whose arms
you have borne, and in which you have been victorious, and this upon
premeditation and in cold blood, I should have thought to be against
any example in human nature, but for those alleged by Machiavel
of Agathocles, and Oliveretto di Fermo, the former whereof being
captain-general of the Syracusans, upon a day assembled the Senate and
the people, as if he had something to communicate with them, when at a
sign given he cut the senators in pieces to a man, and all the richest
of the people, by which means he came to be king. The proceedings of
Oliveretto, in making himself Prince of Fermo, were somewhat different
in circumstances, but of the same nature. Nevertheless Catiline, who
had a spirit equal to any of these in his intended mischief, could never
bring the like to pass in Rome. The head of a small commonwealth, such
a one as was that of Syracuse or Fermo, is easily brought to the block;
but that a populous nation, such as Rome, had not such a one, was the
grief of Nero. If Sylvia or Caesar attained to be princes, it was by
civil war, and such civil war as yielded rich spoils, there being a vast
nobility to be confiscated; which also was the case in Oceana, when
it yielded earth by earldoms, and baronies to the Neustrian for the
plantation of his new potentates. Where a conqueror finds the riches of
a land in the hands of the few, the forfeitures are easy, and amount to
vast advantage; but where the people have equal shares, the confiscation
of many comes to little, and is not only dangerous but fruitless.
The Romans, in one of their defeats of the Volsci, found among the
captives certain Tusculans, who, upon examination, confessed that the
arms they bore were by command of their State; whereupon information
being given to the Senate by the general Camillus, he was forthwith
commanded to march against Tusculum which doing accordingly, he found
the Tusculan fields full of husbandmen, that stirred not otherwise from
the plough than to furnish his army with all kinds of accommodations
and victuals. Drawing near to the city, he saw the gates wide open, the
magistrates coming out in their gowns to salute and bid him welcome;
entering, the shops were all at work, and open, the streets sounded
with the noise of schoolboys at their books; there was no face of war.
Whereupon Camillus, causing the Senate to assemble, told them, that
though the art was understood, yet had they at length found out the true
arms whereby the Romans were most undoubtedly to be conquered, for
which cause he would not anticipate the Senate, to which he desired them
forthwith to send, which they did accordingly; and their dictator with
the rest of their ambassadors being found by the Roman senators as
they went into the house standing sadly at the door were sent for in as
friends, and not as enemies; where the dictator having said, “If we
have offended, the fault was not so great as is our penitence and your
virtue,” the Senate gave them peace forthwith, and soon after made the
Tusculans citizens of Rome.
But putting the case, of which the world is not able to show an example,
that the forfeiture of a populous nation, not conquered, but friends,
and in cool blood, might be taken, your army must be planted in one of
the ways mentioned. To plant it in the way of absolute monarchy, that
is, upon feuds for life, such as the Timars, a country as large and
fruitful as that of Greece, would afford you but 16,000 Timariots, for
that is the most the Turk (being the best husband that ever was of
this kind) makes of it at this day: and if Oceana, which is less in
fruitfulness by one-half, and in extent by three parts, should have no
greater a force, whoever breaks her in one battle, may be sure she shall
never rise; for such (as was noted by Machiavel) is the nature of the
Turkish monarchy, if you break it in two battles, you have destroyed its
whole militia, and the rest being all slaves, you hold it without any
further resistance. Wherefore the erection of an absolute monarchy in
Oceana, or in any other country that is no larger, without making it a
certain prey to the first invader is altogether impossible.
To plant by halves, as the Roman emperors did their beneficiaries,
or military colonies, it must be either for life; and this an army of
Oceaners in their own country, especially having estates of inheritance,
will never bear because such an army so planted is as well confiscated
as the people; nor had the Mamelukes been contented with such usage in
Egypt, but that they were foreigners, and daring not to mix with the
natives, it was of absolute necessity to their being.
Or planting them upon inheritance, whether aristocratically as the
Neustrians, or democratically as the Israelites, they grow up by certain
consequences into the national interest, and this, if they be planted
popularly, comes to a commonwealth; if by way of nobility, to a mixed
monarchy, which of all other will be found to be the only kind of
monarchy whereof this nation, or any other that is of no greater
extent, has been or can be capable; for if the Israelites, though their
democratical balance, being fixed by their agrarian, stood firm, be yet
found to have elected kings, it was because, their territory lying open,
they were perpetually invaded, and being perpetually invaded, turned
themselves to anything which, through the want of experience, they
thought might be a remedy; whence their mistake in election of their
kings, under whom they gained nothing, but, on the contrary, lost all
they had acquired by their commonwealth, both estates and liberties, is
not only apparent, but without parallel. And if there have been, as
was shown, a kingdom of the Goths in Spain, and of the Vandals in Asia,
consisting of a single person and a Parliament (taking a parliament to
be a council of the people only, without a nobility), it is expressly
said of those councils that they deposed their kings as often as they
pleased; nor can there be any other consequence of such a government,
seeing where there is a council of the people they do never receive
laws, but give them; and a council giving laws to a single person, he
has no means in the world whereby to be any more than a subordinate
magistrate but force: in which case he is not a single person and a
parliament, but a single person and an army, which army again must be
planted as has been shown, or can be of no long continuance.
It is true, that the provincial balance bring in nature quite contrary
to the national, you are no way to plant a provincial army upon
dominion. But then you must have a native territory in strength,
situation, or government, able to overbalance the foreign, or you can
never hold it. That an army should in any other case be long supported
by a mere tax, is a mere fancy as void of all reason and experience as
if a man should think to maintain such a one by robbing of orchards; for
a mere tax is but pulling of plum-trees, the roots whereof are in other
men’s grounds, who, suffering perpetual violence, come to hate the
author of it; and it is a maxim, that no prince that is hated by his
people can be safe. Arms planted upon dominion extirpate enemies and
make friends; but maintained by a mere tax, have enemies that have
roots, and friends that have none.
To conclude, Oceana, or any other nation of no greater extent, must have
a competent nobility, or is altogether incapable of monarchy; for where
there is equality of estates, there must be equality of power, and where
there is equality of power, there can be no monarchy.
To come then to the generation of the commonwealth. It has been shown
how, through the ways and means used by Panurgus to abase the nobility,
and so to mend that flaw which we have asserted to be incurable in this
kind of constitution, he suffered the balance to fall into the power of
the people, and so broke the government; but the balance being in the
people, the commonwealth (though they do not see it) is already in the
nature of them. There wants nothing else but time, which is slow
and dangerous, or art, which would be more quick and secure, for the
bringing those native arms, wherewithal they are found already, to
resist, they know not how, everything that opposes them, to such
maturity as may fix them upon their own strength and bottom.
But whereas this art is prudence, and that part of prudence which
regards the present work is nothing else but the skill of raising such
superstructures of government as are natural to the known foundations,
they never mind the foundation, but through certain animosities,
wherewith by striving one against another they are infected, or through
freaks, by which, not regarding the course of things, nor how they
conduce to their purpose, they are given to building in the air, come to
be divided and subdivided into endless parties and factions, both civil
and ecclesiastical, which, briefly to open, I shall first speak of the
people in general, and then of their divisions.
A people, says Machiavel, that is corrupt, is not capable of a
commonwealth. But in showing what a corrupt people is, he has either
involved himself, or me; nor can I otherwise come out of the labyrinth,
than by saying, the balance altering a people, as to the foregoing
government, must of necessity be corrupt; but corruption in this sense
signifies no more than that the corruption of one government, as in
natural bodies, is the generation of another. Wherefore if the balance
alters from monarchy, the corruption of the people in this case is
that which makes them capable of a commonwealth. But whereas I am not
ignorant that the corruption which he means is in manners, this also is
from the balance. For the balance leading from monarchical into popular
abates the luxury of the nobility, and, enriching the people, brings the
government from a more private to a more public interest which coming
nearer, as has been shown, to justice and right reason, the people upon
a like alteration is so far from such a corruption of manners as should
render them incapable of a commonwealth, that of necessity they must
thereby contract such a reformation of manners as will bear no other
kind of government. On the other side, where the balance changes from
popular to oligarchical or monarchical, the public interest, with the
reason and justice included in the sane, becomes more private; luxury is
introduced in the room of temperance, and servitude in that of freedom,
which causes such a corruption of manners both in the nobility and
people, as, by the example of Rome in the time of the Triumvirs, is more
at large discovered by the author to have been altogether incapable of a
commonwealth.
But the balance of Oceana changing quite contrary to that of Rome, the
manners of the people were not thereby corrupted, but, on the contrary,
adapted to a commonwealth. For differences of opinion in a people not
rightly informed of their balance, or a division into parties (while
there is not any common ligament of power sufficient to reconcile or
hold them) is no sufficient proof of corruption. Nevertheless, seeing
this must needs be matter of scandal and danger, it will not be amiss,
in showing what were the parties, to show what were their errors.
The parties into which this nation was divided, were temporal or
spiritual; and the temporal parties were especially two, the one
royalists, the other republicans, each of which asserted their different
causes, either out of prudence or ignorance, out of interest or
conscience.
For prudence, either that of the ancients is inferior to the modern,
which we have hitherto been setting face to face, that anyone may judge,
or that of the royalist must be inferior to that of the commonwealths
man. And for interest, taking the commonwealths man to have really
intended the public, for otherwise he is a hypocrite and the worst of
men, that of the royalist must of necessity have been more private.
Wherefore, the whole dispute will come upon matter of conscience, and
this, whether it be urged by the right of kings, the obligation of
former laws, or of the oath of allegiance, is absolved by the balance.
For if the right of kings were as immediately derived from the breath
of God as the life of man, yet this excludes not death and dissolution.
But, that the dissolution of the late monarchy was as natural as the
death of man, has been already shown. Wherefore it remains with the
royalists to discover by what reason or experience it is possible for a
monarchy to stand upon a popular balance; or, the balance being popular,
as well the oath of allegiance, as all other monarchical laws, imply an
impossibility, and are therefore void.
To the commonwealths man I have no more to say, but that if he excludes
any party, he is not truly such, nor shall ever found a commonwealth
upon the natural principle of the same, which is justice. And the
royalist for having not opposed a commonwealth in Oceana, where the
laws were so ambiguous that they might be eternally disputed and never
reconciled, can neither be justly for that cause excluded from his full
and equal share in the government; nor prudently for this reason, that
a commonwealth consisting of a party will be in perpetual labor for her
own destruction: whence it was that the Romans, having conquered the
Albans, incorporated them with equal right into the commonwealth. And
if the royalists be “flesh of your flesh,” and nearer of blood than were
the Albans to the Romans, you being also both Christians, the argument
is the stronger. Nevertheless there is no reason that a commonwealth
should any more favor a party remaining in fixed opposition against it,
than Brutus did his own sons. But if it fixes them upon that opposition,
it is its own fault, not theirs; and this is done by excluding them. Men
that have equal possessions and the same security for their estates and
their liberties that you have, have the same cause with you to defend
both; but if you will liberty, though for monarchy; and be trampling,
they fight for you for tyranny, though under the name of a commonwealth:
the nature of orders in a government rightly instituted being void of
all jealousy, because, let the parties which it embraces be what they
will, its orders are such as they neither would resist if they could,
nor could if they would, as has been partly already shown, and will
appear more at large by the following model.
The parties that are spiritual are of more kinds than I need mention;
some for a national religion, and others for liberty of conscience,
with such animosity on both sides, as if these two could not consist
together, and of which I have already sufficiently spoken, to show that
indeed the one cannot well subsist without the other But they of all the
rest are the most dangerous, who, holding that the saints must govern,
go about to reduce the commonwealth to a party, as well for the reasons
already shown, as that their pretences are against Scripture, where the
saints are commanded to submit to the higher powers, and to be subject
to the ordinance of man. And that men, pretending under the notion
of saints or religion to civil power, have hitherto never failed to
dishonor that profession, the world is full of examples, whereof I shall
confine myself at present only to a couple, the one of old, the other of
new Rome.
In old Rome, the patricians or nobility pretending to be the godly
party, were questioned by the people for engrossing all the magistracies
of that commonwealth, and had nothing to say why they did so, but that
magistracy required a kind of holiness which was not in the people;
at which the people were filled with such indignation as had come to
cutting of throats, if the nobility had not immediately laid by the
insolency of that plea; which nevertheless when they had done, the
people for a long time after continued to elect no other but patrician
magistrates.
The example of new Rome in the rise and practice of the hierarchy (too
well known to require any further illustration) is far more immodest.
This has been the course of nature; and when it has pleased or shall
please God to introduce anything that is above the course of nature,
he will, as he has always done, confirm it by miracle; for so in his
prophecy of the reign of Christ upon earth he expressly promises, seeing
that “the souls of them that were beheaded for Jesus, shall be seen to
live and reign with him;” which will be an object of sense, the rather,
because the rest of the dead are not to live again till the thousand
years be finished. And it is not lawful for men to persuade us that a
thing already is, though there be no such object of our sense, which God
has told us shall not be till it be an object of our sense.
The saintship of a people as to government, consists in the election
of magistrates fearing God, and hating covetousness, and not in their
confining themselves, or being confined, to men of this or that party or
profession. It consists in making the most prudent and religious choice
they can; yet not in trusting to men, but, next God, to their own
orders. “Give us good men, and they will make us good laws,” is the
maxim of a demagogue, and is (through the alteration which is commonly
perceivable in men, when they have power to work their own wills)
exceeding fallible. But “give us good orders, and they will make us
good men,” is the maxim of a legislator, and the most infallible in the
politics.
But these divisions (however there be some good men that look sadly on
them) are trivial things; first as to the civil concern, because the
government, whereof this nation is capable, being once seen, takes
in all interests. And, secondly, as to the spiritual; because as the
pretence of religion has always been turbulent in broken governments, so
where the government has been sound and steady, religion has never
shown itself with any other face than that of its natural sweetness
and tranquillity, nor is there any reason why it should, wherefore
the errors of the people are occasioned by their governors. If they
be doubtful of the way, or wander from it, it is because their guides
misled them; and the guides of the people are never so well qualified
for leading by any virtue of their own, as by that of the government.
The government of Oceana (as it stood at the time whereof we discourse,
consisting of one single Council of the people, exclusively of the King
and the Lords) was called a Parliament: nevertheless the parliaments of
the Teutons and of the Neustrians consisted, as has been shown, of the
King, lords, and commons; wherefore this, under an old name, was a
new thing a parliament consisting of a single assembly elected by the
people, and invested with the whole power of the government, without
any covenants, conditions, or orders whatsoever. So new a thing, that
neither ancient nor modern prudence can show any avowed example of the
like. And there is scarce anything that seems to me so strange as that
(whereas there was nothing more familiar with these councillors than to
bring the Scripture to the house) there should not be a man of them that
so much as offered to bring the house to the Scripture, wherein, as
has been shown, is contained that original, whereof all the rest of the
commonwealths seem to be copies. Certainly if Leviathan (who is surer
of nothing than that a popular commonwealth consists but of one council)
transcribed his doctrine out of this assembly, for him to except against
Aristotle and Cicero for writing out of their own commonwealths was not
so fair play; or if the Parliament transcribed out of him, it had been
an honor better due to Moses. But where one of them should have an
example but from the other, I cannot imagine, there being nothing of
this kind that I can find in story, but the oligarchy of Athens, the
Thirty Tyrants of the same, and the Roman Decemvirs.
For the oligarchy, Thucydides tells us, that it was a Senate or council
of 400, pretending to a balancing council of the people consisting of
5,000, but not producing them; wherein you have the definition of
an oligarchy, which is a single council both debating and resolving,
dividing and choosing, and what that must come to was shown by the
example of the girls, and is apparent by the experience of all times;
wherefore the thirty set up by the Lacedaemonians (when they had
conquered Athens) are called tyrants by all authors, Leviathan only
excepted, who will have them against all the world to have been an
aristocracy, but for what reason I cannot imagine; these also, as void
of any balance, having been void of that which is essential to every
commonwealth, whether aristocratical or popular, except he be pleased
with them, because that, according to the testimony of Xenophon, they
killed more men in eight months than the Lacedaemonians had done in ten
years; “oppressing the people (to use Sir Walter Raleigh’s words) with
all base and intolerable slavery.”
The usurped government of the Decemvirs in Rome was of the same kind.
Wherefore in the fear of God let Christian legislators (setting the
pattern given in the Mount on the one side, and these execrable examples
on the other) know the right hand from the left; and so much the rather,
because those things which do not conduce to the good of the governed
are fallacious, if they appear to be good for the governors. God, in
chastising a people, is accustomed to burn his rod. The empire of these
oligarchies was not so violent as short, nor did they fall upon the
people, but in their own immediate ruin. A council without a balance is
not a commonwealth, but an oligarchy; and every oligarchy, except it
be put to the defence of its wickedness or power against some outward
danger, is factious. Wherefore the errors of the people being from their
governors (which maxim in the politics bearing a sufficient testimony to
itself, is also proved by Machiavel), if the people of Oceana have been
factious, the cause is apparent, but what remedy?
In answer to this question, I come now to the army, of which the most
victorious captain and incomparable patriot, Olphaus Megaletor, was now
general, who being a much greater master of that art whereof I have made
a rough draught in these preliminaries, had such sad reflections upon
the ways and proceedings of the Parliament as cast him upon books and
all other means of diversion, among which he happened on this place of
Machiavel: “Thrice happy is that people which chances to have a man able
to give them such a government at once, as without alteration may secure
them of their liberties; seeing it was certain that Lacedaemon, in
observing the laws of Lycurgus, continued about 800 years without any
dangerous tumult or corruption.” My lord general (as it is said
of Themistocles, that he could not sleep for the glory obtained by
Miltiades at the battle of Marathon) took so new and deep an impression
at these words of the much greater glory of Lycurgus, that, being on
this side assaulted with the emulation of his illustrious object, and on
the other with the misery of the nation, which seemed (as it were
ruined by his victory) to cast itself at his feet, he was almost wholly
deprived of his natural rest, till the debate he had within himself came
to a firm resolution, that the greatest advantages of a commonwealth
are, first, that the legislator should be one man; and, secondly, that
the government should be made all together, or at once. For the first,
it is certain, says Machiavel, that a commonwealth is seldom or never
well turned or constituted, except it has been the work of one man; for
which cause a wise legislator, and one whose mind is firmly set, not
upon private but the public interest, not upon his posterity but upon
his country, may justly endeavor to get the sovereign power into his
own hands, nor shall any man that is master of reason blame such
extraordinary means as in that case will be necessary, the end proving
no other than the constitution of a well-ordered commonwealth.
The reason of this is demonstrable; for the ordinary means not failing,
the commonwealth has no need of a legislator, but the ordinary
means failing, there is no recourse to be had but to such as are
extraordinary. And, whereas a book or a building has not been known to
attain to its perfection if it has not had a sole author or architect, a
commonwealth, as to the fabric of it, is of the like nature. And thus
it may be made at once; in which there be great advantages; for a
commonwealth made at once, takes security at the same time it lends
money; and trusts not itself to the faith of men, but launches
immediately forth into the empire of laws, and, being set straight,
brings the manners of its citizens to its rule, whence followed that
uprightness which was in Lacedaemon. But manners that are rooted in men,
bow the tenderness of a commonwealth coming up by twigs to their bent,
whence followed the obliquity that was in Rome, and those perpetual
repairs by the consuls’ axes, and tribunes’ hammers, which could never
finish that commonwealth but in destruction.
My lord general being clear in these points, and of the necessity
of some other course than would be thought upon by the Parliament,
appointed a meeting of the army, where he spoke his sense agreeable
to these preliminaries with such success to the soldiery, that the
Parliament was soon after deposed; had he himself, in the great hall
of the Pantheon or palace of justice, situated in Emporium, the capital
city, was created by the universal suffrage of the army, Lord Archon, or
sole legislator of Oceana, upon which theatre you have, to conclude this
piece, a person introduced, whose fame shall never draw its curtain.
The Lord Archon being created, fifty select persons to assist him,
by laboring in the mines of ancient prudence, and bringing its hidden
treasures to new light, were added, with the style also of legislators,
and sat as a council, whereof he was the sole director and president.