MONARCHY ASSERTED OR The STATE Of MONARCHICAL & POPULAR Government IN Vindication of the Considerations Upon Mr HARRINGTON'S OCEANA.  
By M. WREN.  Scinditur incertum studia in contraria vulgus. 
OXFORD, Printed by W. HALL. for F. BOWMAN. Anno Domini M. DC. LIX.   

To The REVEREND D R WILKINS WARDEN OF Wadham College IN OXFORD.  
THE Present I am about to make You is like the Legacy, of that old Grecian, who bequeathed his Friend, a Widow without a Jointure, and a Daughter without a Portion: These Papers come to live upon You, and to put You to charges to maintain them. My first Application to you in the Considerations on the Commonwealth of Oceana, having made the Author of that Book look upon you as one averse from his Principles and Designs, It is very likely that these Discourses which now address themselves to you, (being augmented in their Offence to Him as well as their Bulk) will excite the utmost rage of that Passionate Gentleman. But this being a matter Sir, I have so often seen you laugh at, takes up no part of my Cares. But I must profess myself deeply afflicted, that I have been used as an Occasion of throwing so disingenuous a Contumely upon your University, as M R Harrington in his last Book goes about to fasten upon it. Though I never was a Member of your Body, I have always had thoughts of the highest Veneration for you, And my inclinations are thus far founded upon Gratitude, that I have for some years breathed your Air, and been admitted to a Familiarity with your geatest, both Dead and Living Treasuries of Learning. Though I have no confidence that these Discourses bear Testimony of my profiting by that Converse, I must always own my obligation for it, both to the University in Common, and to those particular Persons with whose Friendship I have been honoured: That you are one of these, Sir, it is my Glory to declare, and to be known for  
Your most constant Humble Servant. M. WREN.   

THE PREFACE To The READER  
THAT Mr Harrington 
In Epist.  who undertakes to vindicate the reason of Popular Government and I who have professed myself a Friend to Monarchy, should from the observation of the same Natural Causes, and of the same Actions in History, form different Judgements, is no more a wonder than that two Men viewing the same Object by various lights, should judge it to be of various Colours. But it seems a little strange that even in such things where We both make use of the same light, and where it is my interest to be of his Opinion, our Jugements should not be reconcileable. I speak this in reference to the Apology He makes for Private men's dealing in State Affaires, and obtruding Models of Government upon the World, or teaching new arts of Policy to those Men whose Experience has rendered them Masters of that Trade: Which though I always reputed a great Vanity, I conclude more blamable since I have seen the Excuses he is able to make for it. For though it is not to be denied that Aristotle, Machiavelli, and Sir Thomas More are great Persons, and may by their Authority give Protection to any man who is admitted into their Train, yet the Question still remains, Whether this Privilege can be extended to every little Writer that puts himself into their Livery. The works of those Persons have met with an applause in the World equal to their merit, because keeping themselves within general Terms, The have preserved the Freedom of Philosophers; Or if at any time They have descended to particulars, it has been without any reflection upon a particular Time or Place; This can be no justification to a Book which professes to have nothing of Fiction or Romance, but to be adapted to the Occasions or Necessities of a particular Juncture, And is not proposed with the Temper and Moderation becoming a Philosophical Opinion, but with the heat and passion belonging to a Design. Which way of writing has no more affinity with the other, than a Libel has with a serious Tract, or a Pasquin with History; Those men indeed who can ●e persuaded that Christoph. Columbus made 
Praefat.  〈◊〉 Card in his Cabinet that found out the Indieses may perhaps believe also that Mr Harrington may frame a good Commonwealth without any Experience in State Affairs; But they who understand that Columbus must first have been at the Indies before he could make a Card to teach other Men the way thither, will go near to suspect Mr Harrington's Abilities in Modelling a Commonwealth, till he has spent some years in the Ministry of State. I must therefore acknowledge that I do not lay claim to Pardon for having thrust myself into a Dispute of Government, by any part of the Apology Mr Harrington has made for it: But I do not despair of doing it by representing, That what I have said is all by way of Universal Position, without any private Aim or Design; That I was not without reluctancy at first drawn to it by the Authority of some Friends, from whom Mr Harrington did by all imaginable Importunity endeavour to extort something by way of Objection; That afterward I was willing to preserve the Freedom of my own and other men's Opinions, and not suffer that They who pretend so much to Liberty, should with insupportable Tyranny bring a slavery upon our Discourse and Reason.  
I wish that this could have been effected by some other Method then by managing a Controversy; For that way of writing has a suspicion of ill Nature upon it, and looks more like an improvement of Contention, than an inquiry into Truth. It is by a very happy Metaphor called drawing the Saw, For the Noise We make tears the Ears of such as stand by, And the Dust We raise puts out their Eyes. Besides when one Book is shackled to another (like Spaniels in Couples) It is impossible by ranging to spring new Matter, or to give the Reader any thing of Delight or Diversion.  
But I am more than ordinarily unfortunate by having to deal with an Adversary who multiplies upon Me all the inconveniencies of Controversy, by having banished from it that Calmness of which it is Capable, and that Sincerity with which it ought to be managed; For to speak modestly, Mr Harrington's Arguments are not always Demonstrations nor his Expressions Compliments. But for my part I intent not to enter into Competition with him for being either an able Sophister or Calumniator; but I will preserve that Temper which belongs to a Man who disliking Passion in other People, aught to detest it in himself; And notwithstanding all his provocations, I will more consider what it is fit for Me to speak then Him to hear. In my present Answer to his Reply to the Considerations on Oceana, I have not been curious of any other Method than his own, but have made twelve Chapters confronting his, in discussion of the twelve Questions he has propounded; And in the Margin I have by the letter H. cited such Passages of his Book to which my Answers are particularly applied.  
To confess a secret, I am so much gratifyed by something in Mr Harrington's Book, that I know not how to be offended with Him. In several places he insinuates as if the Considerations on his Commonwealth of Oceana were not my own, but had been composed by the University, or at least by some eminent Persons in it: This is beyond measure obliging, For with those men who are persuaded by him that the Considerations had not much of sense in them, the Discned it slides off from me upon other People; But if any man shall still retain a good Opinion of that Pamphlet, It must need be infinitely advanced by the thought, That so renowned an University should in any measure concur to it.  
Yet I could have been well contented He would have afforded me his Belief, when I assured him I had no relation to the University: That would I am sure have saved him a great deal of unnecessary Pains, And He should not need so vainly to have pursued Me through the various shapes of a Divine, a Doctor, an Head of a College, a Professor, a Prevaricator, a Mathematician. He might also by that have concealed the Pique He has so unjustly taken up against Universities and Mathematics, and some particular persons who have an interest in both. One passage of his referring to this Head, is a little less intelligible than so fine a piece ought to be, and therefore I will do Him and the World the right to make a short Comment upon it. He has said in h● Epistle Delicatory, That the University Wit● or good Companies, are good at two things, at diminishing a Commonwealth and at Multiplying a Louse. In the first place it must be known that the thing he alludes to is a limb of Mathematics, and therefore it is not to be expected that Mr Harrington, who holds no understanding either with Mathematics or Mathematicians, should take care for expressing himself properly about it; What he call Multiplying a Louse ought to have been Magnifying, for the thing is done by a Microscope or Magnifying Glass; But about this no man need be troubled. We are then to understand That a Gentleman in the University who is both a Divine, a Doctor, an head of a College, and a Mathematician, has the Satisfaction to see frequently at his Lodging an assembly of Men who are known both at home and abroad to be of the most learned persons of this Age; The employment of this Company is by making Experiments and by communicating their Observations to carry on a discovery of Nature, in order to which They have sometimes had occasion to inquire, by the help of a Microscope, into the Figure and position of those smaller parts of which all Bodies are composed; At other times applying the Microscope to some little Animals, as a Flea, a Louse, or a Mite, They have been convinced that the Fabrik of them is Artificial to wonder, and that the Wisdom of the great Architect of Nature is not more conspicuous in the larger Bulks of an Elephant or Camel, then in these little Creatures. The pictures of these Animals in that enlarged proportion which the Glass represents them in are drawn by a Mathematician a member of this Assembly, who has invented a way to measure the apparent magnitude of them, and are seen with Delight and Instruction by all Strangers; And not only so, but have been received with applause by Foreign Princes. This is that multiplying a Louse, for which Mr Harrington laughs at the University wits, though he might have made a more serious and profitable use of it; As it is said Monsieur Peiresk did, who having put a Louse and a Flea into a Microscope, He observed that the Louse growing 
Gassend. in vita Peresk. lib. 6.  angry, his blood ran up and down from head to foot, and from foot to head again; Whence he gathered how great a Commotion of Humours and Spirits, and what a disturbance of all the Faculties, Anger must needs make, And what harm that man avoides who shuns passion. I know not whether this sight would have had the same operation upon Mr Harrington, in freeing him from his Choler, But I am sure it inclines me to no unpleasant thoughts, by putting me in mind of a certain Author, who aestuates and torments himself, and yet an hair is enough to hold him.  
The only Compliment I have for the Reader remains, which is to assure him That this is the last time He shall receive a Trouble from Me in this Controversy, I do not expect that Mr Harrington should give over, but I promise myself He can not reply any thing to which an Answer may not be easily fitted out of those Reasons and Maxims which I have already laid down. I have cause to think by his last Book, that his stores of Reason and Arguments are brought very low, but withal I believe his Treasures of Reproaches are inexhaustible: And to silence such a person is as impossible as to disarm that Man who can use the next Dunghill for a Magazine.   

MONARCHY ASSERTED. OR, THE STATE OF MONARCHICAL AND POPULAR GOVERNMENT.  

CHAP. I.  
Whether Prudence be well distinguished into Ancient and Modern.  
FOr the Vindicating the Considerations on the Commonwealth of Oceana, I shall not need to do much more than give a true and accurate state of the Points that fell in question between Mr Harrington and Me; for ●e being equally careless of what I have said, and what He himself says, does almost always fly of ●●om the true subject of the debate between us. And I do not know any more proper Method of ●eclaiming such Extravagant Writers, than what men take with starting Horses, To bring them close ●p to take a View of that at which before they boggled. In effecting which if Mr Harrington be sometimes put to feel the Rebukes both of the Spur and Bit, no blame can justly befall Me, who am necessitated to so rough a Manage.  
Mr Harrington at the very beginning of his Commonwealth of Oceana, had laid down a division of Government (pretended to be taken out of Giannotti) into Ancient and Modern Prudence, the Ancient unanimously followed by the Greeks and Romans ending with Caesar, the Modern introduced by the Barbarous Nations: Now knowing that Antiquity is considered with Veneration by almost all Men, and that even They who profess to slight it, make great Advantage of it when they imagine it is on their side, He entitles to Ancient Prudence that way of Popular Government which his Book applauds, and fastens upon Modern Prudence that Monarchical Government which it Decries. And that He is not wronged by 
Oceana p. 2.  this Interpretation of his Design, appears manifestly by his subsequent Definitions of Government. Against this Partition of Prudence into Ancient and Modern, and the Application of it that way, the Author of the Considerations advanced these objections.  
1. That though the Greeks and Romans despised all the World but themselves, We had no Reason to do so, it being in them no better than Pride, Pedantry, and slavery to narrow thoughts.  
2. That the Examples of the Assyrian, Persian, and Egyptian Monarchies would not consist with this Division, all of which were more ancient than the Greeks and Romans.  
3. That Macedon one of the Noblest parts of Greece itself, had always been under the Power of Monarches.  
4. That in the rest of Greece Regal Government was more Ancient than Popular; for which (to avoid the useless Prolixity of particular Proofs, which are almost infinite) one General Authority was produced out of Thucydides.  
5. That in Rome also Popular Government must give the precedence of Time to Monarchy.  
He that after all this, will maintain Prudence to have been well distinguished into Ancient & Modern, and that by Ancient Prudence is to be understoodthe Policy of a Commonwealth, gives us great Occasion to expect from him Evident and Satisfactory Answers to every one of these Objections.  
But to the first of them Mr Harrington's Answer (when all the Foam is wiped away) comes only to this, that the Greeks and Romans who were 
H. p. 57  such Jealous Conservators of Liberty, and Masters of such excellent parts of knowledge can not with any Truth or Sense be charged with Pedantry, or slavery to narrow Principles. To which it may be replied in short (for the dispute taken thus is become very remote from the Principal matter) that both Romans and Greeks were indeed a brave and a wise People, and such as put a great Value upon themselves, which when done upon just grounds is an effect of Magnanimity; But they have withal been ever Responsible to the learned part of the World, for their Arrogance in not acknowledging how much they profited by the Eastern Nations, from whom it is demonstrable They borrowed the greatest part of what they had of Arts and Sciences. The Greeks and Romans possessed Much, yet what they wanted was More; But they taking the Much to be All, were in that Slaves to their own thoughts which were much Narrower than the Nature of things.  
To the second Objection, Mr Harrington gives somewhat an unexpected Answer; That having opened the Policy of Turkey, He has not neglected 
ibid.  that of the Babylonians and Persians, which are summed up in the other. The Controversy is about the Antiquity of Regal and Popular Government, And because it is manifest that many Commonwealths are more Ancient than the Turkish Monarchy, which is of about three or four hundred years, Must it therefore be concluded also that they are Ancienter than the Assyrian and Persian Monarchies, which are of three or four thousand years standing? We are not more beholding to Mr Harrington for his Discovery of the Balance, then for the Invention of this excellent form of Arguing.  
The third Instance is by Mr Harrington passed over in wise silence.  
As little Answer is returned to the Fourth. But upon occasion of a Citation out of Thucydides, Mr Harrington pleases himself that He has found something in that Author that makes for the Balance, which (slipping from the subject in hand) He runs away with, and prosecutes at large. But this Discourse being somewhat unfortunately scattered in this Place, with Mr Harrington's Permission it shall be transplanted to the Chapter 
See cahp. 3.  of the Balance, a soil more proper for it. And well we can part so; For it is to be doubted whether the Considerer is like to get so well off another place of the same Author; Never, says Mr Harrington, did man make a more unlucky Choice for himself then the Considerer has 
H. p. 3.  of Thucydides, seeing what He affirmeth to have been Ancient Prudence, is deposed by his own Witness to have been the Imbecility of Ancient Times. Thucyd. lib. 1. Pag. 3. Truly the Considerer is a very unhappy Man, but his unhappiness lies not in the mistaking of Thucydides, but of Mr Harrington, from whom he expected to have seen some Probation, that the Prudence which was Ancient belonged not to Monarchies; But He finds the Question fraudulently transferred from the Antiquity, to the Prudence of Monarchical Government, which in this Place came never before into Debate, and was supposed by Mr Harrington himself both in his Division and Definitions of Government. The Considerer will thank any man to tell him, Who is the Prevaricator now?  
Having thus detected the Cheat which was out of Thucydides put upon us concerning the Antiquity of Monarchical Government among the Grecians, I shall not need to do more than admonish, That (in answer to the fift Objection) the same is endeavoured out of Florus in Reference to the Romans.  
I make no Doubt there is enough said for my own Vindication; but it were a criminal In justice to the memory of the excellent Giannotti, if I should not extend this Vindication to Him also, and bring him off from that share of the Absurdity into which Mr Harrington has drawn him, by making him Author of the Division of Prudence into Ancient and Modern. It is no longer a Wonder to Me that Mr Harrington's Adversaries are used with so little Civility, when I see his Friends meet with so little Honesty; The injury he does Giannotti is very apparent, seeing the two Limits or Epocha's of time which Giannotti fixes have no reference to Prudence, or Monarchical and Popular Government, but respect only the afflicted 
Gi●n. p. 7.  Condition of Italy; One of these, says He, in which was the beginning of the ruin of Italy and the Roman Empire, was when Rome was oppressed by the Arms of Caesar: The other, in which was the height of the Italian misery, was when Italy was overrun and sacked by the Huns, etc. This surely has nothing to do with the Government of King and People, or Ancient and Modern Prudence; That Distinction is Mr Harrington's own, & Giannotti is not at all Responsible for the Impropriety of it, than which nothing can be greater.  
There is besides these Answers to my Objections something in Mr Harrington's first Chapter relating to the University (for which He had not from Me the least shadow of an Occasion) which approaches very near to Raving, and gives Me cause to suspect I have fallen into a wrong Course of curing his Political distemper, For whereas I think to do it by giving him more Light, knowing men are of Opinion, that I ought to have closed up the Windows, and admitted no Light at all.  
Now then after all, I resolve to join issue with Mr Harrington, and let the Reader know He need look no farther than this Chapter to see what Answer has been made to the Considerations on the Commonwealth of Oceana.   

CHAP. II.  
Whether a Commonwealth be rightly defined to be a Government of Laws, and not of Men, And a Monarchy to be the Government of some Man or few Men, and not of Laws.  
IN the very Entrance of this Chapter I am charged by Mr Harrington with an Habitual Falsehood and Fraudulence in reciting his Words, for which I am thankful to him, as for a seasonable Discovery of his good Nature. The only Evidence to make good this Accusation will be found to be, that instead of the Word Art, as it was in his Book, Act is twice printed in the Considerations. That this is an Error of the Press, I might appeal to my own Copy, if it were not sufficient to appeal to the Indifferent Reader, whether there can be any frandulence in such a Variation, of which I make no Use, and which is not in the least conducing to my Design. I envy Mr Harrington this handsome Confidence, that having been himself so miserably handled by Printers, He should think fit to make Me responsible for all the sins of the Press. But though I praise his Confidence, I cannot imitate his slender Ingenuity, by laying at his Door the Nonsense and Mistakes in this last Book, though order be there taken, that they should be imputed unto the Author himself, In as much as the Printer pretends (upon the last Page) to have corrected the Errors of his Press.  
The Question under Debate in this Chapter is little more than a Controversy about Words and Names, yet cannot be safely omitted because by the use of those Names the People have been always deluded, and have (taking a Cloud for Juno) embraced them as Substantial Goods: Laws and Liberty being the only True Charms, that I know of, in Nature, which by the mere sound of Words produce Great and Real Effects.  
That Law proceeds from the Will of Man, I 
H. p. 7.  have Mr Harrington's own Confession, and consequently am justified for having said, That Government is not in the Law, but in the Person whose Will gave a being to that Law. But I am complained of for wanting Honesty to Consider that this Will must have a Mover, and that this Mover is Interest. I never knew, that to be Honest, it was necessary to see more in another Man's business than He sees himself: I was at that time only concerned to find somewhat in Government beyond Laws, and such was the Will of the Person which creates those Laws; If Mr Harrington does now think fit to consider that this Will must be moved by Interest, I neither need nor mean to oppose him in it. I can be not only Honest but Liberal to Mr Harrington, yet not to that Excess as to give him an Alms, when he begs no less than the whole Question; For so much it amounts to where he says, That the Interest of the whole 
ibid.  People coming up to the Public Interest may be truly called the Empire of Laws and not of Men, In order to this, let Me demand of him Whether the Commands imposed upon the Public by One or a few Men are to be accounted Laws? He has already taught Us they are to be so accounted where he says That Law equally 
ibid.  proceeds from Will, whither of the whole People as in a Commonwealth, of one Man, as in an Absolute, of few Men as in a Regulated Monarchy If so, what pretence of Reason can there be, That an Absolute or Regulated Monarchy should be esteemed less a Government of Laws than is a Commonwealth? On the other side let Me ask Him, Whether though one single Person, or Ten or an Hundred Persons making Laws are to be looked on as Men, yet if they amount to Ten or an hundred thousand Persons, or include the whole People, They shall then cease to be Men? Unless He will affirm this, How is it possible that a Commonwealth should be less a Government of Men, then either an Absolute or a Regulated Monarchy? To be plain, If the Declared Will of the Supreme Power be considered as the Immediate Cause of Government, than a Monarchy is as much as a Commonwealth an Empire of Laws and not of men: If we look further back, and consider the Persons whose Will is received as Law, a Commonwealth is as much as a Monarchy an Empire of Men and not of Laws. This is so manifest, and yet Mr Harrington so firmly resolved not to understand it, that considering his Temper I must needs applaud his Resolution of having nothing to do with the Mathematics, For half this Obstinacy would be enough to keep him from apprehending, That the three Angles of a Triangle are equal to two Right Angles.  
Though I have said more then enough in Answer to this double Question, Whether a Commonwealth be rightly defined to be a Government of Laws, and not of Men, And a Monarchy to be the Government of some Man or few Men, and not of Laws; Yet I may seem to have said too little, unless I take notice of an Argument which by Occasion of this Dispute has been started against Monarchy. Let it be admitted, may some Democratique say, that Monarchy is as much as a Commonwealth an Empire of Laws, yet a Commonwealth must necessarily be an Empire of better Laws 
ibid.  than a Monarchy; For in a Monarchy the Laws being made according to the Interest of one Man or a few Men, must needs be more private and Partial than suits with the Nature of Justice, Whereas in a Commonwealth Laws being made by the whole People, They come up to the Public Interest, which is Common Right and Justice. This Proposition has indeed Sense in it, which the other wanted, but not any more Truth, as will be apparent if We examine the Differing Tempers of a single Person, and of a Multitude enacting Laws.  
When a single Person or Monarch gins to think of establishing any Law, He must in all Reason be then most sensible of those Vast Cares which are never so pressing as at the undertaking an Action which draws after it a long Train of Consequences; For upon the Establishment and Execution of Good Laws depends that Justice which preserves every Man in his own; The fruits of Justice are the Satisfaction and Welfare of the People, and from these flow Public Peace and Security, which are a Princes first and Greatest Interest: Hence it is evident that when a Monarch acts the Legislator's part, He ought to be so fare from Partiality or respecting his own private Interest, that He is then chief to Direct his Thoughts to the Common Good, and take the largest Prospect of Public Utility, in which his own is so eminently included. Nor do I believe there can be many Examples produced of Princes who in enacting Laws have considered their own private Personal Interest, since almost every where We see that in buying and selling, and other private Contracts, Princes are Content to tie themselves up to the same Rules which they prescribe to others. And even in those Cases where the Laws made by Princes seem most directed to their own Interest, before We condemn them, It ought to be examined, Whether such Laws be not Requisite to the attaining the Ends of Government, And Whether the Advantages in Power which Princes gain by them be not absolutely Necessary for the Conservation of Public Peace and Tranquillity; For then the Private Interest of the Prince, and the Public Interest do no longer differ, but are one and the same thing.  
On the other side there cannot be a fonder Imagination then to think That when a Multitude is assembled to enact Laws, is is necessary their Resolutions should be consonant to Public Justice, and the Universal Interest; For a great Part will not for want of Capacity comprehend what this Justice and Interest is; The abler sort will presently be divided into factions and juntas, and under Pretence of Public Interest will prosecute their own Designs. I cannot understand how it is the Public Interest of the whole People to Govern and make Laws, but indeed to be so Governed and live under such Laws, that Justice may be impartially administered, and Every Man preserved in the Enjoyment of his Own, which I have shown to be a Monarch's chief Care. It is to be remembered also that the greatest Part of Laws concern such Matters as are the continual Occasion of Controversy between the People of a Nation; Such are the Laws which respect the Regulation of all Contracts and Bargains, the Privileges of Companies and Corporations, the Encouragements and Limitations of Manufactures, the Licences and Prohibitions of Traffic, with many more of the same Nature, by all which some Part of the People being Gainers, and another Part Loser's, They cannot where their Interests are thus divided be so fitly qualified for Legislators, as is a Prince who having no private Concernment going, can have no aim but the Common good. After all, it being essential to Popular Assemblies that the Plurality of Votes should oblige the whole Body, those Laws which lay claim to the Consent of all, are very often the Resolutions of but a little more than half, And must consequently go less in their Pretensions to Public Interest.  
Let Us see how these Things have been carried in Experience: And We shall every where find, That those Laws which are reputed the People's greatest Security against In justice and Oppression have been established by the Authority of some Prince; Thus Alfred, Edward, Lewis, Alfonso, in their several Ages and Dominions, have been excellent Legislators; But above all, Several of the Roman Emperors, and chief Justinian, have (by the Advice of a few private Men whose Assistance they voluntarily thought fit to make use of) fabricated those Laws so much admired for their Reason and Equity, which have stretched themselves further then ever the Roman Legions were able to march, and which are still embraced by those People who have long since ceased to acknowledge the Roman Empire.  
But on the other side, Those Commonwealths which have been most celebrated for their Laws, have received them from the hands of a sole Legislator, as Athens and Sparta; Or else the People conscious of their own Incapacity that way, have invested some few Men with a Supreme Power for the Constitution of Laws, as the Romans did the Decem viri. And therefore it may well be doubted, whether these People thought so well of themselves as Mr Harrington seems to do of all Popular Assemblies, while He with such repeated Confidence asserts that the People never fail to judge truly of the Public Interest where the Senate 
Oceana p. 183.  discharge their Duty; If the Senate divide well He undertakes for the People they shall be sure, to make a good Choice. For my part I confess that this is too hard for my Faith, and that I rather think if Anacharsis were again in the World, He would meet with Occasion to renew the Observation He made of the Grecian Popular Assemblies, That wise Men propounded 
Plut. in Solon.  Matters, and Fools decided them.  
To discover all the weak Arguments and false Inferences of Mr Harrington is a Work, to Others of so small Profit, and to myself of so little Glory, that I resolve to pass very slightly over that Paragraph where He tells Us, That it is not the Declaration of the Will of the Sovereign Power which constitutes and revokes Laws, but that it is with Laws as with a Bond, which continues in force till all the Parties agree to repeal or Cancel it: He foresaw the objection against this Example, That it is a private One, And therefore puts the Case between several Prince's 
H. p. 8.  States, or Governments, or between several States of the same Principality or Government. But though it may suit very well with Mr Harrington's Occasions to Put this Case, it will not become Us to admit of it, who ought to understand that the Leagues and Confederacies between several Princes or States have nothing of the Nature of a Bond in them; For when either Party thinks fit to recede from them (though in itself it may be an Act of Injustice) there is no superior Tribunal to appeal to, by which the Party can be constrained to stand to the Obligation, but the Business must be determined by a War. Much less have they any thing of the Nature of Law in them, unless, as Mr Harrington seems to be of Opinion, Princes or States may make Laws not only for themselves but for their Neighbours too; Which Maxim agreeing so well with his Legislative humour, may one day serve to produce as fine Models of Government for France or Spain, as he has given us for England. Nor is the Case altered by putting it between the 
ibid.  several States of the same Principality or Government, For if any one of these States have, in Case of Difference, a just Power to force the obedience of the Other, it is all one as if they were private Persons; But if no One of them be acknowledged to have such Power over the Rest, Then in case of their Disagreement, there remains no known Sovereign Power, but that Nation is reduced to the State of War; From whence it is evident That they were not at first to have been considered as several States of the same Government, but as equal Independent Ones which were only joined together by some League or Union.  
Before I finish this Chapter I must retract an Error of which Hr Harrington has convinced Me: He had affirmed That for Mr Hobbs to say Aristotle and Cicero wrote not the Rules of their Politics from the Principles of Nature but transcribed them into their Books out of the Practice of their own Commonwealths, was as if a Man should say of famous Harvey that He transcribed his Circulation of the Blood, not out of the Principles of Nature; but out of the Anatomy of this or that Body: To which I replied, That the whole force of the Objection amounted but to this, That because Harvey in his Circulation hath followed the Principles of Nature, therefore Aristotle and Cicero have done so in their Discourses of Government. I confess, The Affirmation not being of itself manifest, and I ignorant of any Obligation to take it upon Mr Harrington's Word, I thought the Probation of it must lie in the Resemblance of Aristotle's and Livie's Books of Government with Harveys of Circulation: But this was an Error in Me, and an Injury to Mr Harrington, For in his last book He has assured 
H. p. 9  Me, that He produced it only as a Similitude, and never intended that any Man should look for Reason or Argument in it. I hearty crave his Pardon, and by way of Reparation to him, I make here a solemn Declaration, That for the future He shall have no Cause to accuse Me for expecting Reason or Argument in any of his Discourses.   

CHAP. III.  
Whether the Balance of Dominion in Land be the Natural Cause of Empire.  
I Shall lie under a very great Discouragement in the Prosecution of this Contest with Mr Harrington, unless some such Rules may be established between Us, as are observed by the Champions at a Country Wake; That He who gets a broken Head is for that Time Horse du jeu, and must not take up the Cudgels any more. For if Mr Harrington may continue the Liberty of repeating (notwithstanding my Answers) whole Pages of his Oceana without any Addition of Argument, It will be easy for him every Month to impregnate the Press with a New great Book. Of this his Repartition I give Notice once for all, being unwilling to be so frequent in the Admonition as He is in the Practice of it.  
Yet We are not to think that there is nothing New in his last Book, for though his Reasons stand at a stay, his Confidence improves hugely, and He now tells Us, that (in Despite of Mathematics) by the Doctrine of the Balance He 
H. p. 11.  has made the Politics the most Demonstrable of any Art whatsoever. I am sorry I have so little Credit with Him, else I should soberly advise him to obtain from this Word Demonstration, for though it fiils his Mouth admirably, some have taken Occasion to doubt it has left a great dealeof empty room in his Head.  
The Invention of the Balance He jealously asserts to be his own; Though in another place he gins to doubt that Phaleas the Chalcedonian may dispute it with Him; And that with great Reason, seeing it is evident out of Aristotle (though it be rejected by him, as I shall hereafter discover) that Phaleas did many Ages since light upon the same Fancy, I fear also that He will in another Respct prove of the younger house, for many Months before the Publication of his Oceana, there came forth a Letter, pretended to be sent from an Officer of the Army in Ireland to his Highness the LORD PROTECTOR, concerning his changing of the Government, in which the Doctrine of the Balance, was not obscurely hinted. But this last will (it may be) trouble Mr Harrington but little, since it is not unlikely the Author of that Letter goes a share in the Commonwealth of Oceana. However, I shall not make myself Judge of this Controversy, but rather, being Mr Harrington has thought fit to walk over the same Ground again in this Chapter of the Balance, take that Occasion to apply myself to a more accurate Discussion of the whole Question, than I before thought Necessary. Which will be best performed by these Gradual Assertions.  
First, That Dominion in Land is a mere Effect of Empire, and therefore cannot be the Cause of it, unless to be the Cause and the Effect be but one and the same thing. Originally every man had Right to every thing, and no One Man had more Title to one Piece of Land, than He had to any other Piece, and then Every Man had to the same Piece: Or if this Assertion be thought too large, at least There was not settled Propriety before the Establishment of Empire, nor could any Man be said to have the Dominion of that Land, from whence He might be immediately ejected by the Violence of the next Invader. But after the Establishment of Empire, when the United Force of those who became Subject to One Sovereign Power was grown greater than could be resisted by Particular Men, Then and not before was Propriety and Dominion in Land fixed according to such Rule and Proportion as the Sovereign Power thought Requisite. As for those two ways of Natural and Violent Revolution by which Mr Harrington imagines Propriety may come to have a being before Empire, they are not to be admitted further than in Reference to this or that particular Empire, and so indeed Propriety may be said to be before Empire, as the Propriety of the Families of Nassau or Brederode to their Lands, was before the Empire of the States of Holland: But then this Propriety depended upon some former Empire, and would no longer continue to be Propriety if the succeeding Empire, (be it either by Natural or Violent Revolution) did not allow and Authorise it. Wherefore it is evident, That seeing Dominion in Land depends merely upon Empire, it must needs be a gross Absurdity to say, That the Balance of Dominion in Land is the Natural Cause of Empire. If notwithstanding this it can be made out, that there is such a Complication of Empire with the Balance in Land that the Conformity of the Balance is necessary to the health and long Life of Empire, To fit Empire to the Balance is to set the Sun by the Clock, The Dominion in Land being in that Case to be reduced to such a Balance as best suits with the Empire: Which inverts the Aim, and at once overthrows the whole Model of the Commonwealth of Oceana.  
But in the second Place, This Illation need not be pursued, because I think it may with very good Reason be asserted That Justice is that by which all Empires subsist, and come to be (as far as humane Instability permits) Eternal. It is an Error to think (as has been already touched) that the Generality of a People are infected with a Desire of Sovereign Power, and will not be satisfied with Protection in their present Possessions, and Encouragement in Acquiring more by the way of a Regular Industry. The Multitude, 
Arist. Polit. lib. 4. cap. 13. & lib. 4. cap. 8.  says Aristole, are not disgusted at being excluded from the Government, but rather are very well pleased to sit Quiet and be at leisure to follow their own Business, unless they are oppressed and see their Governors make havoc of the Public. If a Prince be careful of the Administration of Justice, and do not by any Public, or signal private Violation of it exasperated his Subjects, He need not fear the want of their Assistance for the Defence of his Throne, All Popular Commotions that happen in a Nation being grounded upon Pretence, at least, of some Injustice in the Governor. And though this Prince be overbalanced in Land by any Part of the People, it does not therefore follow, That they will refuse to continue under his Government, as long as it is administered with Justice: For it is a chief Part of the Function of the Supreme Magistrate to be as it were a Public Arbitrator, to whom the Decision of all Controversies among his Subjects is referred, and We know that in an Arbitrator, it is not Riches but Integrity and Ability that Men look after; Nor have I heard any reason why a Poor Man, if known to be honest, may not be trusted to keep stakes in a Wager for more than his Estate comes to.  
Yet because the Actions of a Prince though in themselves just, may though Mistake or Malice not be considered as such by a People, I do not mean that a Prince should be devested of all Power but what He gains by the Opinion of his Justice and Innocence; And therefore in the third Place I descend to examine how far Riches conduce to Sovereign Power, and Whether an Estate in Land is naturally Productive of Empire more than any other Revenue.  
The Reparation of our Substance by continual Supplies of Meat and Drink, And the Defence of our Bodies (in cold countries' especially) from the Injuries of the Wether by Garments and Habitations, are the first and most Natural Cares of Mankind; We did not long continue satisfied with what was purely necessary of this Sort, but soon grew up to desire Convenience and the Real pleasing our Senses, And at last came to seek after things of Luxury and Vanity, which depend altogether upon Opinion. And because no Man by his single Power could be secure in the Possession of any of these Things, there was an early Willingness in Men to submit to Empire, that by their United Force (which is that We call Sovereign Power) They might be maintained (upon such Terms as the Sovereign Power pleased to establish) in the Acquiring and Possessing such Things as tended to the Ends already mentioned: This was the Introduction of Propriety. At first this consisted only in the Fruits of the Earth and Cattle, And He who had Land enough to bring forth more of these than He could consume, was a Rich Man, and might with the Superfluity drive some little Commerce by way of Exchange with the Neighbourhood. But after that Men had found out a way of Intercourse with People far remote, and a more considerable Traffic began to be set on foot, Something was fixed upon by general Consent which might be the Common Measure of the Value of all Things needful to Man; This is called Money, which by its Portability and Currentness having a great Advantage in the Use of it, a Value came also to be put upon That, known by the Name of Usury or Interest. And now He that abounds with Money, need not be in want of such Things as are Useful to him, because other Men will for his Money be glad to let him have part of their Superfluity.  
Out of this We may infer, That since the Establishment of Propriety by the Sovereign Power has rendered it neither Free nor Safe for particular Men to make Use of Force in gaining such Things as they stand in need of, Riches do highly conduce to Power; For Men that are unprovided of other means of acquiring such Things as They can not want, are feign to apply themselves to the Rich for obtaining of them, Who do not use to part with them, but in Exchange of some Service or Subjection by which they grow Powerful. Yet this Power gained by Riches is always dependant upon the Sovereign Power which Institutes and preserves Propriety; For against a Force strong enough (such as are Conquests and successful Rebellions) to overthrow the settled Propriety by the Subversion of the Sovereign Power, Riches are not of any Defence, but rather matter of Invitation to an Enemy by the greatness of the Booty.  
We may also infer That where there is no Traffic or Money, as in new Plantations, the Riches which conduce to Power consist in Dominion of Land able to produce such Things as are necessary or Convenient to Subsistence; But in other Places where the Estimate and Purchase of all useful things is reduced to Money, there the Influence which Riches have upon Power flows not from an Estate in Land only, but principally and immediately from ready Money; Or to make use of Mr Harrington's Words, The Balance of Dominion in Land is not the Natural Cause of Empire.  
This was of old known to Aristotle, who having related the Project of Phaleas the Chalcedonian to settle a Government by reducing Estates to an Equality, with the expedient invented by him to bring it to pass, At last He rejects it for this Reason chief; That He had not considered aright of 
Arist. Polit. lib. 2. cap. 7.  this equality, having only endeavoured to introduce it in Land, (What is this but Mr Harrington's Balance in Land?) Whereas Riches consisted as well in Slaves, and Cattle, and Money, and Furniture, in all of which He ought to have settled the same Equality or Moderate Proportion, or else altogether to have omitted that Fancy.  
In this Particular also Mr Harrington seems to have lost ground to the Considerer; for whereas He at first maintained that the Balance 
Oceana p. 5.  in Money can be equal to that of Land only in Places of great Trade and little no Land as 
H. p. 14.  Holland and Genoa, He is now feign to confess that in Israel and Lacedaemon too, the countries' being narrow and the Lots at a low scantling, if Usury in the One and in the other Money had not been forbidden, Money would have eaten out the Balance of Land. This is upon the Matter to surrender the whole Question, and to Allow that in all Places where there is money enough to hold any considerable Proportion to the Land (And the Considerer was not so senseless to think there could be weight in empty Bags) There the Balance in Money does concur to Empire as much as that in Land.  
So then Mr Harrington's Assertion is not a little straightened, and He that undertook to make good in the General that Empire rests upon the Balance in Land, is content it should prove so only in a Territory of such extent as 
H. p. 15.  Spain or England, where the Land can not be overbalanced by Mony. For this He offers three Arguments, the first of which belongs not it seems to the Matter but the Man. The Considerer had said that to make Wisdom or Riches the first Principle of Government, were as unjust as it would be to oblige Mr Harrington to give his  or Money to 
ibid.  the next Man he meets Wiser or Richer than himself. If he had said stronger, says Mr Harrington, he had spoiled all. 'tis very true, the Considerer knew that, and therefore did not say so. Is that a Crime? He has in more than one place of the Considerations made appear what Influence He thinks force had Originally upon Government, and therefore there is no Reason to take it ill that He did not in this place contradict his own Opinion: But, Mr Harrington continues to urge, The Richer as to the Case in Debate is the stronger, and if the People have Riches, that is Cloth; or Money of their own, they must rise out of the Propriety or Cultivation of Land, and so the Balance of Land must of Necessity be in the People themselves, who having that will never give their 
H. p. 16.  Clothes or Money or Obedience unto a single Person or a Nobility, though these should be the richer in Money, whence it is evident that in such a Territrry as England or Spain, Money can never come to overbalance Land. A fine Modest Argument this, which though it be called a Demonstration, I should never suspected to have been meant for a Mathematical One, but that I find it going upon certain Data or Postulata, two of which by Misfortune happen to be the very things which were to be proved, As first, that if the People have Riches they must rise out of the Propriety or Cultivation of Land, And then that Ready Money though in never so great a Quantity cannot outweigh the Balance in Land. To speak freely, This whole Passage has so little Affinity with sense, that I must believe Mr Harrington was in Choler, and intended it as a Piece of Revenge against the Considerer, for having dared to put a Supposition that any Man could be Wiser than the Author of Oceana.  
His second Argument (and that's called a Demonstration too) is that Henry the seventh, 
ibid.  though the richest in Money of English Princes did by making Farms of a Standard, and cutting of Retainers begin that Breach in the Balance of Land, which hath since ruined the Government. But did that Ruin swallow up the Government while that ready money was in being? Or did not his Son Henry the eight by his Pleasures and unprofitable Wars exhaust all that Treasure in a few of the first years of his Reign? I may with Modesty and Truth enough let Mr Harrington know that if the Exchequer had eighteen years ago been as well furnished as Henry the seventh left it, He might now probably have wanted the Occasion of showing his Skill in Modelling a Commonwealth.  
The third Argument is, That the Monarchy of Spain since that King had the Indies, stands upon the same Balance in the Lands of the Nobility, on which it always stood. This it seems We must believe for Mr Harrington's sake without any further Proof, though the Opposite Assertion, That it does not stand upon the same Balance, was proffered as an Instance against him by the Consider; Who can now fortify his Side by this Observation, That from the Discovery of the American Mines to the year 1640 (a Tract of time of more than 120 years) the Crown of Spain has not been disturbed by any Domestic sedition of the Nobility, for which there cannot any so Probable Reason be assigned, as the Increase of the King's Revenue in ready Money by which he is enabled to maintain a Force that overballances their Estates in Land.  
Mr Harrington's Arguments being thus fitted with Replies, it will be expedient to resume the Consideration of those ways by which a Revenue both Private and Public may be raised, that so We may the better judge, Whether in such a Territory as Spain or England Money may not come to overbalance Land: But I do not think it belongs to Me to do this with the Accurateness either of a Philosopher who discourses (as Aristotle does in the second of his Economics) of all the several possible ways of managing an Estate, Or of a Financier who makes a Proposition for the raising a present sum of Ready Mony. It will be enough to observe in general the most ready and Natural Methods by which a Considerable Revenue may be obtained.  
The First of these is by the Propriety and Cultivation of Lands, which is a very general Way, and the sole Considerable One in such Places where the Methods hereafter expressed are not practicable. Out of this, in some Places, a certain Tax or Proportion is payable to the Sovereign Power, by which the Owner loses no part of his Propriety, yet has as it were a Rent Charge laid upon his Estate.  
The second is taken from the Bowels of the Earth, which in some Parts are fertile of those Metals that need only the stroke of an Hammer to make them Current Money; These are either belonging solely to the Supreme Power though taken out of other Men's Ground, as here in England, Or at least a great share of them belongs to the Prince, as it is with the King of Spain in respect of all the Gold and Silver of America.  
The third is by Traffic and Commerce; And that either Private and Domestic, as carrying the Commodities of a Man's own Growth to Market, and Mean Artisans selling their Work to the Neighbourhood, which are often charged by the Public with some Excise or gabelle; Or else Public and Foreign, when by Public Authority Companies are form for the better Exportation and Importation of Goods and Manufacture: And out of these some considerable Duties and Customs, do almost every where issue to the Public Revenue.  
The fourth and last is from the Profit of Money by Usury, And that also either Private, when every Man puts out his own Money, upon which some Assessment, payable by the Lender, to the Public aught in all Reason to be imposed, Usurers being otherwise very unprofitable Members of a State, and the only Men who contribute nothing to the Public Charge: Or else Public under the Inspection and Security of the Supreme Power, commonly known by the name of Banks, by which no small Revenue uses to accrue to the Public.  
Now to show that in Spain or England the three last ways of raising a Revenue may be more considerable than the first, Or, which is all One, that Money may overbalance Land, will not be difficult, if We consider that Spain (And if Henry the seventh had given ear to Columbus his Proffer England had been Mistress of the same Treasures) is possessed of all the Bullion of the West Indies amounting annually (not to mention greater Sums gained at the first Discovery of those Countries) to 3 or 4 millions of our Money, which is by Mr Harrington's Calculation a full third of all the Land in England. Next, Spain or England are either of them by Nature endowed with all Advantages for taking the whole Traffic of the World into their Hands, and are inferior to the Dutch who enjoy it, in nothing but Industry: What the Importance of this is or might be, the Dutch will best help Us to Understand, Who by that alone without any considerable Land, have been able to baffle Spain, and contest with England. And if Spain or England have or may have such a Traffic; They may also when they please erect a Bank for any the Greatest sum of Mony.  
Against this Mr Harrington has but One Objection in store, which is, That the Purse of a Prince never yet made a Balk, nor till Spending 
H. p. 17.  and Trading Money be all one, ever shall; Where there is a Bank, Ten to One there is a Commonwealth. This does Us no hurt, For if England or Spain were a Commonwealth, their Balance in Money might then outweigh that in Land, which is the Thing contended for. But He will be in Danger to lose his Wager, and his Credit to boot; For some Monarches have been as great Traders as any Commonwealths; The example of the Medici's he yields Me, to that I will add the Crown of Portugal, which presently after the Discovery of the Cape of good Hope did manage that mighty Lucrative Traffic which now the Dutch and English share with them: The Examples of the Mogor and other Eastern Princes may also be alleged, who though Monarches are very great Traders. And where there is a Traffic, it is undeniable but that, if it be found expedient, there may be a Bank; Or is Antwerp a Commonwealth, or the Monti at Rome planted in a Popular Government?  
It would not be unfit also that before We consent to resolve that in such a Territory as England Money can never overbalance Land, We did a little reflect upon the Successes of our last Wars, and inquire Whether it was not the Money of the City of London which turned the Scales.  
Having thus examined what the Influence of Riches is upon Empire, What the Importance of Propriety in Land, and What that of ready Money, in such a Territory particularly as Spain or England, I may with reason expect not to be thought to have strained very much at the 
H. p. 18.  Doctrine of the Balance, much less, to have been choked with it. I confess I cannot swallow it so fast as Mr Harrington, but that, it may be, does not hinder Me from digesting it better. At least I have leisure to observe that while He attributes so much to the Balance, He commits an Error in making an Army depend merely upon the Riches of those who have the Disposing of it: For though it be true That an Army is a Beast with a great Belly which subsisteth not without very large Pastures, It is as true that this Beast is none of those tame Ones that are kept within Fences, or imprisoned in a Several: When an Army is once on foot, the Enclosure of the Law is too weak to hold it in, And Propriety is no better than an Hedge of rotten Sticks. It was the Observation of Him who had Wit and Experience enough to be the Founder of the Roman Monarchy, That Men 
Dion. Cass. lib. 42.  and Money are the two Things by which Power is acquired and preserved, And that these two do mutually support One another; For as by Money an Army is brought together, So He that has Arms in his hand need not want Mony. Thus even after the Settlement of Propriety by Government and Laws, Force goes a share with Riches, and is not wholly excluded from concurring to the Establishment of Empire.  
Nay further, If there comes to be a Contest between Gold and Iron, the Advantage generally remains with the harder Metal, And He that has Arms in his Hand, may when He pleases both command the Money in his Neighbour's Pocket, and also gather the Rents of his Lands: As it of old fell out among the Thurians, Where the Nobility had engrossed all Offices and Magistracy into their own Hands, and had bought (though against the Law) the Lands of the 
Arist. Polit.  whole Country; Yet the People being exercised & enured to the Wars, proved too hard for the Nobility and their Guard, And dismissed them of their Power and excessive Possessions in Land. From which Example these two Corollaries are evidently deduceable, That an Agrarian Law is not a sufficient Provision for fixing the Balance, And that the Conformity of the Balance to the established Government does not necessarily secure a State from Changes and Revolutions.  
One thing more remains to dispatch this Question of the Balance, And that is to produce Examples of such Governments as have been settled contrary to the Balance in Land; But I find by the whole Course of Mr Harrington's Reply to Me, that this way of arguing is of no great Efficacy with Him, For either He takes no Notice of such Examples, or by some pitiful unmanly Cavil seeks to elude them. Wherefore I am put to make use of another Method, that is to bring him as a Witness against himself, and to prove this Point by the Authority of his own Assertions. In the 73 page of his Discourse concerning Ordination against Dr Hamond, He has imparted this Lesson to Us; The People of Egypt till having sold their Lands they came to lose their Popular Balance, were not servants unto Pharaoh, wherefore when Joseph was made Governor over all Egypt they were Freevill And in Consequence to this We are told by him 
H. p. 56.  in another Place, That the Balance of absolute Monarchy or of a Nobility came into Egypt by the Purchase of Joseph. But it is evident that the Exercise of Sovereign Power was before belonging to the Kings of Egypt in a most Absolute manner, seeing the People when not only their whole Fortunes and Estates, but their very Lives also lay at stake by the Extremity of the Famine, had not force enough to break open the Granaries and take out Corn for their sustenance, but were feign to buy it of the King at his own Price. And if the People of Egypt had not in the Case of extreme hunger (which uses to enrage the most abject and slavish People of the whole World) Power enough to serve themselves when there was enough of Corn in the Land, It is ridiculous to think they could retain any Power or Liberty in reference to the Government. Wherefore the Balance of Egypt being Popular, and the Government Absolute Monarchy, Mr Harrington himself has furnished Us with a clear Example of a Government that has been settled contrary to the Balance in Land.  
I might by this time lawfully hope for a Release from this Dispute of the Balance, if I were not engaged by my Promise in the first Chapter, to examine that place of Thucydides, which by diverting the Discourse gave Mr Harrington the Opportunity of saying something upon a Subject in which He must otherwise have been silent. But what He has there said is so extravagant and wandering from the true meaning of Thucydides, that I must needs think either He has parted with his own Understanding, or believes his Readers willing to part with theirs. Let the first 12 or 14 Pages of Thucydides, which serve as an Introduction to his History, be considerately perused, And it will be found to be the Author's aim to make it appear, That the Actions he goes about to describe were more great and considerable than any had formerly been performed by the Grecians. To this end He relates, That of old, Greece was not constantly 
Thucyd. p. 2.  inhabited, but that at first there were often Removals, every One easily leaving the place of his Abode to the Violence of some greater Number. Every Man so husbanded the Ground, as but barely to live upon it without any stock of Riches, and planted Nothing, but made account to be Masters in any Place of such necessary Sustenance, as might serve from day to day. And for this Cause 
Id. p. 3.  they were of no Ability at all, either for greatness of Cities, or other Provision. And the Imbecility of Ancient Times is not a little demonstrated also by this, That before the Trojan War nothing appeareth to have been done by Greece in Common. This then is Manifest to have been the oldest Condition of Greece, That though the People were not absolutely destitute of Civil Society, yet those Societies being of very small Numbers were too weak to improve by Plantation or Traffic, but were forced to abandon their Habitations to the Violence of such whom the fatness of the Soil invited thither. And as these Societies of Men were of themselves weak and inconsiderable, so were they without any League or Union in Common, by which this their Imbecility might have received a Cure. Suitable to their Condition was their manner of living, To wear Iron, or be always in Arms, 
Id. p. 4.  and to count Thieving the best means of their living, being a Matter at that time no where in Disgrace, but rather carrying with it something of Glory. But Minos having built a Navy, Navigators had the Sea more free, For He expelled the Malefactors out of the Islands, and in most of 
Id. p. 5. & 6.  them planted Colonies of his own. By which means They who inhabited the Sea coasts, becoming more addicted to Riches, grew more constant to their dwellings; Of whom some grown now Rich compassed their Towns about with Wals. For out of desire of gain, the meaner sort underwent Servitude with the Mighty; And the Mighty with their Wealth brought the lesser Cities into Subjection. It appears by this that the first considerable increment of Greece was by King Minos, who having suppressed the Pirates, and rendered Navigation safe, the Maritime Cities by their Traffic soon began to grow Rich, and for their Security fortified themselves, and by these Advantages (People in want flocking to their Service) they prevailed over the lesser Cities, and grew up to some indifferent Force, with which the War of Troy was undertaken: Which Enterprise though of greater Name than any before it was through want of Money but weak, and 
Id. p. 8.  in fact beneath the Fame and report which, by means of the Poets, now goeth of it. After the Trojan War also the Grecians continued still their Shift and Transplantations, insomuch as never resting they improved not their Power. But after a long time Greece had constant Rest, and shifting their seats no longer at length sent Colonies 
Id. p. 9  ahroad. When the Power of Greece was now improved, and the desire of Money withal, their Revenues being enlarged in most of the Cities there were erected Tyrannies. (For before that time Kingdoms with Honours limited were Hereditary.) And the Grecians built Navies, and became more seriously addicted to the Affairs of the Sea. Yet was not their Naval force very great, for having spoken of such Fleets as had been brought together either by Tyrants or Cities, and of the Actions performed by them, He concludes, That if Men consider of the War he describes by the Acts done in the same, It will manifest itself to be greater than any of those before mentioned. These 
Id. p. 13.  are the Passages of Thucydides out of which Mr Harrington goes about, by an unheard of Chemistry, to extract the Doctrine of the Balance; But He must give Me leave to observe these Errors and False Consequences in his Operation.  
First He says that When out of desire of gain the Meaner Sort underwent Servitude with the Mighty, It caused Hereditary Kingdoms with Honours limited; As happened also with Us since the times of the Goths and Vandals. Good! So 
H. p. 2●  We will be content to acknowledge this imaginary Force of the Balance, that Prudence which He himself calls Modern, and will have to be first introduced into the World after the breaking of the Roman Empire, shall be allowed to be more ancient than the most ancient Republics. But I beseech him Where does He find that the Servitude the meaner Sort underwent with the Mighty caused Hereditary Kingdoms? Thucydides owns no such Causality, Nor do those two passages of His thus joined together by Mr Harrington appear to have any Reference to one another. Nay on the contrary it is manifest that Hereditary Kingdoms were before that Servitude, seeing that Servitude happened not till after Minos, who was a King, had by scouring the Seas of Pirates and destroying their Nests, given Security to Traffic, by which and not by the Balance of Land these Cities grew Potent.  
In the second Place, He attributes the Power of Pelops to the Balance in Land, Whereas Thucydides says expressly, He obtained this Power by the abondance of Wealth He brought with him out of Asia, to Men in want. Did He transport his Land with Him? Or is not this a clear Instance of the Prevalence of Money against the Balance in Land?  
But than thirdly, He at the same time supposes no Propriety in Land till after the Trojan War, And yet makes before that War the Overbalancing of the Mighty to be the Cause of Hereditary Kingdoms. This has the aspect of a Contradiction, into which it is likely he slipped, by not having a true apprehension of Thucydides, who does not affirm there was in those remote Ages He treats of, a time when there was no Propriety, but only that Men being not yet united into great Nations, but living in small Clans, there joint Force was not sufficient to defend them against the Violence of such who had any small odds in Number, which was the Cause of so frequent Transmigrations.  
Fourthly, He will have the Revenues of Greece which were enlarged about the Time of erecting the Tyrannies, to consist only in Land, unless forsooth We can show there was Usury at that Time: He must pardon Me for this also, It is enough that there then began to be great Trading, which is plainly testified by Thucydides where He says That the Grecians became more seriously addicted to the Affairs of the Sea.  
Fifthly, He imagines the difference between the old Hereditary Monarchies and the new erected Tyrannies to have been only in the People's Apprehension of them, who being grown Rich called that Government Tyranny, which before during their Poverty, They had been content to own for a lawful Monarchy. This is indeed to be a true Servant to his own Supposition, but not to be a faithful Historian of the Actions of other Men; For in some of these Tyrannies the change from Monarchy must be attributed to the Princes themselves, Who upon 
Arist. Polit. lib. 3. cap. 15. & lib. 5. cap. 10.  the increase of Wealth having put off the Sobriety and Moderation of their Predecessors, and addicted themselves to Avarice and Luxury, or as Thucydides expresses it, Their desire of Money being improved with their Power, governed their People with all manner of Insolence and Oppression. But most of the Tyrannies were then at that time first erected, for the old Monarchies having by the failing of the Royal 
Arist. Polit. lib. 3. cap. 14. & lib. 5. cap. 5.  Lines, or by the remisseness of the Princes been changed into Commonwealths, the Supreme Power was afterward usurped by such Persons who having no just Claim, were forced to secure themselves by Violent and Tyrannical Courses.  
Last of all, Because Thucydides comparing only the Actions of the old Grecians with those He is about to describe, gives the Advantage to the latter, calling the other the Imbecility of Ancient Times, He would therefore have it thought, that the Considerer has made an unlucky choice of Thucydides his Testimony. But it is easy for Me to convince him, that though I had on my side no other Testimony (which by the way is untrue, the matter being attested by all the Greek Histories of those remote Ages) but this of Thucydides I were upon Terms secure enough: For first Thucydides mentions this Imbecility only in reference to the times before the Trojan War, and not the whole time that Greece was governed by Hereditary Monarches; And then again, this Imbecility is no diminution of the Antiquity of that Government, (which was the sole thing at that time in Debate between Us) nor yet any Imputation to the Prudence of it; For it is not to be understood of any Moral or Political Imbecility radicated in the Nature of that Government, but of a Natural one equally attending the Infancy of all Governments; Arms, Shipping, Money and the other Provision by which a Nation frees itself from this Imbecility, being not original or essential Members of any Government, but like Hair the Productions of Age and Growth.  
I could not at a less Expense of Time and Pains satisfy my Promise to consider these Passages of Thucydides; To some Readers it will not, possibly, be unacceptable to have been rescued from an Erroneous Apprehension of of that excellent Author; For my own part I gain by it the satisfaction of observing that I am not the only Person who suffer by Mr Harrington.   

CHAP. IU.  
Whether the Balance of Empire be well divided into Nationall and Provincial; And whether these two, or Nations that are of distinct Balance, coming to depend upon one and the same Head, such a mixture create a New Balance?  
TO make recompense for the length of the last Chapter, this shall be a very short one. The Question was put by the Considerer, Whether there may not be a Mixture of the Nationall and Provincial Balance, so that the several Parts of an Empire may come to poise one another, and by that produce a New Balance? To this Mr Harrington gives a Solution in the 
H. p. 22.  Negative, by saying that No one Government whatsoever hath any more than One of two Balances; That of Land which is Nationall, or that of Arms which is Provincial. I might without Prejudice to my Cause abstain from any further Discussion of this Question, for coming just now from digging up the Roots of the Doctrine of the Balance, these Branches of it must of themselves whither and fall off. Yet to show that I did not at first without Reason propose the Question, this shall be added in Explication of it.  
There is scarce any one of the Considerable Dominions of Europe which is not (like a rich Fur composed of Tips of Sables) made up of several Pieces; Spain consists of the Crowns of Castille, Arragon, Navarre and Granada, besides divers Kingdom's Islands and Provinces in distant Parts of the World: France, though it looks like an entire Piece, is constituted by several Provinces which have by various Occasions come to be united in that Potent Kingdom: In Spain the power of the Castilian Kings was more absolute than that of the Aragonese; In France some of the Provinces retain Privileges not enjoyed by the rest, as the Liberty of Assembling their particular Estates, and the like. The Considerer, to prove the Mixture of the Balance, made Instance in the Kingdom of Arragon, where since the Union with Castille, the Regal Power is very much advanced, And yet without reducing it to a Provincial Balance, seeing Arragon is still, as to the main, governed by their own Laws, and by their own Officers, and not by an Army. This Instance is rejected by Mr Harrington, because the Balance both in Castille and Arragon being that of a Nobility, They both, says He, continue Nationall. I am desirous of giving him all fair Satisfaction, and therefore am Content to lay aside this Instance, and instead of it fix upon One in France which is not liable to the same Objection, And this shall be the Imperial Cities of Metz, Thoul, and Verdun. These Cities were free Members of the Empire, governed in the way of a Republic by their own Citizens, as Strasbourg and other Imperial Cities are at this day, and by Consequence their Balance must necessarily have been Popular: They were somewhat more than an hundred years ago surprised by the French, who have since incorporated them into the Crown, the Balance of which is by a Nobility; And the last King of France erected a Parliament there, after the manner of the other Members of that Crown.  
Now I am to demand of Mr Harrington Whether the Balance in these Cities be changed from Popular, to that by a Nobility? If He affirms it to be changed, We shall not be obliged to believe him unless He brings Proofs strong enough to overthrow the Vehement Presumption that We may have for the Contrary, by observing that these Cities continue still to be of great Traffic, which must of Necessity keep the Wealth in the People's hands. If He replies that the Balance of them is Provincial, It will be very difficult to apprehend the Truth of that Answer, seeing the Inhabitants of them enjoy all the Privileges of French Subjects, and are governed by the same Laws, and the same Form of Administration of Justice with the rest of France. 'tis true indeed they live under the Power of a Governor, but in that They differ not from Picardy, Champagne, Languedoc and all other Parts of that Kingdom, whose Balance notwithstanding is not therefore Provincial; Nor can it be denied that they have a Garrison upon them, but in this their Case is the same with all the Frontier Towns in France, which are secured with Garrisons, not so much out of Jealousy of the People, as of a Foreign Enemy.  
If then the Balance of these Cities can neither be said to be the Nationall One of the Crown they live under, nor yet Provincial, I had Reason to put the Question, Whether there might not be a Mixture of the Nationall and Provincial Balance, or a poising of one another by the several Parts of an Empire. Of which We may with facility obtain this farther Conception, That as the pretended force of the Balance in any one Country, secures the Power in the Hands of such Persons on whose side the Balance is, So in the Union of several Countries under One Empire, the Power remains with those to whom the Balance resulting from the whole belongs: And as in one Single Country, Men are necessitated to submit to the Balance, because they despair of Power to Oppose it, So in the Union of Several Countries, Some one of them may be obliged to live under a Government different from their own Balance, as knowing themselves to be outweighed by the Balance of the Rest.   

CHAP. V.  
Whether there be any Common Right or Interest of Mankind distinct from the Parts taken severally; And how by the Orders of a Commonwealth it may best be distinguished from private Interest.  
IF I had not been taught by Mr Harrington himself that many Passages of his are to be understood by way of Similitude only, not of 
H. p. 9  Argument or Probation, I should have been very much at a loss how to answer this Chapter: But now by the help of that Instruction I perceive this is intended for a Chapter of Similitudes, And it would be too unkind a Part to oppose a Gentleman in the choice of such Similes as He thinks fit to make use of for the adorning his stile. I am sensible of my having already erred in this Point, and justly incurred Mr Harrington's Anger, by thinking his Similitudes 
Chap. 2.  included somewhat of Reason in them, Therefore I shall employ my Care in this Chapter to impart that Caution to the Reader which I myself have received, lest He should do these Similitudes or their Author so much wrong as to mistake them for Reasons.  
The first Place where this Care may be seasonably employed, is about a Similitude which, though it be taken from Beasts, We are not to expect should have four Feet. Divers of the Beasts (it is Grotius who has observed it) abstain from their own Profit, either in regard of 
Oceana p. 5.  those of the same kind, or at least of their Young. Mankind then (infers Mr Harrington) must either be less just than the Creature, or acknowledge also his Common Interest to be Common Right. To go about upon this Occasion to discover the Causes of that Affection which Brute Creatures bear to their Foetus, And how a Part separated from an Animal to which it had been long united may by the Perpetual stream of Effluviums emitted from it, continue to have an Operation upon that Animal, would be a Disquisition too remote from our present Subject. I will rather make Mr Harrington a Gift of the whole Inference, and allow That Men have the same Affections with the Creatures, And do deny themselves their own Profit for the Advantage of their Family: But what will He gain by this Concession? This will at most serve to prove something of a Common Interest of every Family within itself, but falls infinitely short of making out a Common Interest of all Mankind; And I do justly suspect He will not be much gratified with any Instances taken from Paternity, or the natural Administration or Interests of Families, seeing there is not in that whole Oeconomy one Particular, which does not largely disfavour the Pretensions of Popular Government.  
And therefore He calls in another Similitude to the Rescue, and tells Us out of Hooker, That even stones or heavy things forsake their ordinary mont or Centre, and fly upwards, to relieve the 
H. p. 24.  Distress of Nature in Common. If I should now take this Hint to discourse of Vacuum Disseminatum, of Magnetical Motion, of the Gravitation and Impulsion of Air, of the Protrusion of less heavy Bodies by those that are more Heavy, and of several other Principles belonging to this Subject, Mr Harrington would think Me very Fond of my Natural Philosophy, and more than ordinarily Covetous of an Occasion to divulge it. It is enough that this is but a Similitude, and as such did very well become Mr Hooker in a Rhetorical Exaggeration, Nor shall Mr Harrington be denied the same Liberty while He appears either as Poet or Orator, but when He acts the Legislator's Part, and pretends to fix the Principles of Government, He must not wonder if We remain unsatisfied with such thin Discourses.  
Indeed He himself seems to place no great Confidence in them, but has thought fit to 
H. p. 25.  give Us this farther Demonstration: All Civil Laws acknowledge that there is a Common Interest of Mankind, and all Civil Laws proceed from the Nature of Man, therefore it is in the Nature of Man to acknowledge that there is a Common Interest of Mankind. How? Do all Civil Laws proceed from the Nature of Man? This New Maxim will make strange Havoc among the poor Schoolmen and Authors de Legibus, and quite Ruin all their Divisions and Definitions of Jus Naturale, Jus Gentium, and Jus ; But of all Men honest Vspian will be in the worst Condition who has had the ill Fortune to give us this Account of Civil Laws; Jus  est quod neque in totum à Naturali 
Digest. de Just. & Jur. leg. 6.  vel Gentium recedit, nec per omnia ei servit: Itaque cum aliquid addimus vel detrahimus juri communi, Jus proprium, id est Civile efficimus. Which is beyond Dispute thus far true, That the Obligation of Civil Laws consists properly in such Things to which Men were not bound by Nature, nor by any other Argument but their Subjection to the Power which constitutes those Laws; For otherwise the same Civil Laws must obtain through the whole World, seeing all Men are equally bound to what proceeds from Nature: But though Mr Harrington's Assertion were true, the Considerer were not at all concerned in it, For He at first denying there was any Common Interest of Mankind, only with Reference to Mankind before they had voluntarily listed themselves into Societies, and so rendered themselves Subject to Civil Laws, is not now with any Equity to be oppugned by any Observations taken from the Condition of Mankind after it was become Subject to the Power of Civil Laws. I must always assert, That though Originally in the State of Nature, and Antecedently to all Society, there was no Common Interest of Mankind distinct from the Parts taken severally; (the Obligation laid upon Families by Paternal Power only excepted) but that every particular Man had Right to prosecute his own Advantage, though to the Ruin of other Men, yet since the Institution of Government, Men are obliged besides, nay in many Cases above, their own Private Interest, to advance the Public or Common One: The reason of which is taken from hence, That unless Every private Man does divest himself of his private Interest as well as his private Power, and contribute it to the Public, the Sovereign Power will be disabled from effecting the Design and Aim of Government; And Particular Men will in vain expect from that Power, which has by themselves been so unwisely limited, Protection and the Benefit of Laws: By this Protection and Benefit of Laws, Every Man's Power and Interest which He had parted with, comes home to him again with Increase, the Observation of such Laws as the Sovereign Power finds useful for the Preservation of Society being in an Eminent Manner the Interest of every private Man: For Instance, A man that Steals is put to Death; This is not only the Public Interest, but the Private Interest of every Particular Man, who by the Terror of such a Punishment is in some Measure secured from an Invasion on his Propriety. This Assertion is I confess contradictory to Mr Harrington's, That a Man who steals is not put to Death for 
H. p. 25.  any Man's private Interest, in which, as in this whole Thing called Demonstration, I meet with so little Reason, that it pities Me there is nothing in it which might make it pass for a Similitude.  
Seeing then the Addresses of Reason have been so unsuccessful, I do not wonder to find The other Potent Rival Passion, has obtained so far upon Mr Harrington's Soul. He pretends That the whole Philosophy of the Soul which concerns Policy is demonstrated throughout the Commonwealth of Oceana, And that it consists in deposing 
Ibid.  Passion and advancing Reason unto the Throne of Empire. But it will not be Rational to believe this of a Commonwealth whose Author and Legislator is himself a slave of Passion, and not a Subject of Reason; And I make my Appeal to all uninteressed Persons, Whether through his whole Reply Reason or Passion bear the greatest sway with Mr Harrington, And in reference to this particular Chapter, I desire them to Judge, Whether it be not an heap of very Pitiful Petulancies and Calumnies. Yet it is not to be thought but that in this Anger He has Wit, of which if any Man be unconvinced, He is to be remitted to that admirable Oration He makes to the two Girls, which being a Treasury of such Rare Conceits, aught in all Prudence to be inserted with the other Speeches into the following Editions of Oceana.  
But though his Wit be admirable, his Discretion still has the upper hand; To repeat 40 or 50 lines out of his Commonwealth of Oceana, was not very troublesome, but to examine the Reasons alleged by the Considerer to prove that the Case of the two Girls dividing and choosing their Cake was not applicable to the Institution of a Commonwealth, was too stubborn a Matter to be wrought to his Purpose, and is therefore silently passed over. It is but Justice that I should have leave to repeat too, and put Mr Harrington in mind that He goes upon a false Supposition; For unless the two Girls lived under some Power greater than their own, (And if so they were Members of some Society, and obliged in Disposing of their Cake to behave themselves according to the established Laws of it) They would never have divided the Cake, but the stronger of the two Girls would have taken the whole, or at least so much of it as She thought useful to her.  
In like Manner, If some One Person or Persons who have acquired the Supreme Power (by what Method or Artifice is not as to this purpose Material) shall think fit to frame a Government where the whole People shall be divided into two Assemblies, with one of which shall be the right of dividing or Debating, and with the other that of choosing or Resolving, there is no great Reason to doubt but that this Temper may be effectual to the attaining the Ends of Government: Yet even in this Case, it will be a Necessary Caution, That by mixing the Function of the several Members of the Government, it be not rendered disputable in which of them the Sovereign Power resides, For this destroys the Design of Government, and must frequently reduce things to the State of War. But all this while this is nothing to Mr Harrington's Purpose, and serves not at all to make out the Natural Right of a Commonwealth, seeing this Frame of a Commonwealth depended upon some former Sovereign Power; And to imagine that without the Influence of such a Power, Men unreduced or broken to the Rules of Society, should of themselves contrive themselves into two Assemblies, One of which should divide and the other choose, And that the strongest would not rather engross the whole Right both of dividing and choosing, Is to suppose that which can never be granted, And for which I do not believe there can ever be any stronger Reason produced then Mr Harrington's bare Affirmation.  
For as for that Notion of a Natural Democracy and a Natural Aristocracy, Or that among 
H. p. 27.  twenty Men there will be some few (perhaps Six) excelling the Fourteen in greatness of Parts, It is altogether Arbitrary and destitute of any good ground in Experience; Among the twenty perhaps there will be but One, perhaps Sixteen, who excel the Rest in Parts: Or if this Proportion of about a third be allowed him, it will not be enough to help him over the stile; For though among twenty Men (not related to one another, nor as yet united in any Society) Six be apparently Wiser than the Fourteen, Must the Fourteen therefore necessarily intrust the Six with the Debate of such things as concern their Interest? Is it not much more Natural to every Man to think himself Wise enough to advise about his own Affairs, and to suspect all Persons of a greater Reach than himself? Indeed upon a Supposition that there were any known Common Interest of these twenty Men, it were not improbable that such of them as by Experience were known to be the Wisest, might be entrusted by the Rest with their Common Affairs; But it has been already demonstrated that there can be no such Common Interest (I add now also, Nor no such Experience of one another's Abilities) unless those twenty Men had been before united in some Society, that is, reduced under some Government. Wherefore Mr Harrington stands Convict of Obstinacy in this Paralogism, That He by Supposition puts the twenty Men into a Condition that of Necessity infers them to be already reduced to some Government, And yet at the same time Imagines them free to dispose of themselves as if They lived under no Government, and did but then begin to think of Constituting One.  
To go yet a little farther with him, Admit that at first by some strange Accident a People should happen thus to distribute themselves into two Assemblies, a dividing One, or Senate, and a choosing One or Popular Assembly: Is this Foundation firm enough to sustain the whole Weight of a Commonwealth? May not either of these Assemblies repent of the Bargain, and endeavour to draw the whole Power both of the Debate and Result to themselves? That the Senate may do it by deluding the People, and confounding their Judgements in the Choice or Result seems not improbable; Nor is it Antidote enough to say that The People in a Commonwealth are their own Army, unless it were also Certain that a more subtle Party never had nor could dispossess a simple and ignorant One of the Power of the Sword. But that on the other side the People should not invade the Function of the Senate and take upon themselves the Right of Debate as well as of the Result, can not without some shame be denied by him who has complained of the Athenian, Carthaginian, and Roman People for this very thing. It is true None of these People did go about to take away the Senate wholly, but the difference is not great between dissolving an Assembly, and rendering it altogether Insignificant by robbing it of that Employment for which it was at first Instituted. When the Lion is to choose, the Fox knows his Division must be such as gives all to One side and leaves nothing to the other; If a People be once enraged, the Senate will find themselves concerned to please them in the Division as well as in the Choice. And this was the Condition of the Senate of Capua after the Fright they were put into by Pacuvius, I am verò nihil in Senatu actum aliter, quàm si Plebis ibi esset Consilium. That whole 
Liv.  Scene was laid by Pacuvius with a Design to preserve the Senators and satisfy the People, and by that at once bring them both into a Dependence upon himself; His surprise of the People was indeed very Ingenious, but had He given them time to consider, They would without doubt have found out some among themselves whom They would have thought Wise enough to make a Senate: If not, It must have been for want of Instruction in Mr Harrington's new Doctrine, That the pretended Depth and Difficulty 
H. p. 133.  in Matter of State is a mere Cheat. From the beginning of the World unto this day, you never found a Commonwealth, where the Leaders having Honesty enough, wanted skill enough to lead her unto her true Interest at home or abroad.  
By this it appears, That there is no Common Right or Interest of Mankind (except that of Families arising from Paternal Power) antecedent to the Reduction of Mankind under Government; As also, That the Office of Dividing, or debating, and Choosing or Resolving, Or the different Functions of the Senate and People in a Commonwealth, are not founded upon any Natural Right, but merely upon an Artificial One proceeding from the Designation of some preceding Sovereign Power. And this being the true Case of a Commonwealth, the two distinct Assemblies of the Senate and People have not as to this any more advantage than is between any Parties who give and take Counsel; Counsel is nothing but Ratiocination about the Affairs of another Man, and Ratiocination is the Addition or Subtraction of Propositions; The Operation belongs to the Person who gives Counsel, and the Proof or Examen of it remains in his hand who receives the Counsel: This Mr Harrington is pleased to call dividing and choosing, which in this Sense belongs to a Monarchy as much as to a Commonwealth; For when a Prince asks any Man his Advise (and I think there never was Prince who advised not with some Body) that Man divides, and the Prince makes the Choice; Only here is the Difference, an able Prince if his Counsel has committed an Error in the Operation knows both how to detect and Rectify it, but a Popular Assembly being of themselves unfit for a Debate, are forced to acquiesce in the Division or Debate of the Senate.  
And what if after all the Popular Assembly, fixes upon the wrong Member of the Division? To judge of the Utility or Disutility of a Proposition in matter of State, is I hope another thing from discerning which is the biggest or least Piece of a Cake, And a Discourse about which much of understanding and Experience must be employed, is not of so easy and certain Dispatch, as a Matter which is submitted to the Determination of sense. In one respect, the Choice or Result is an Action of greater Difficulty than the Division or Debate, For an Active Fancy which suddenly Ranges over a great deal of ground, may easily find out the various Methods of which any Business is Capable, but to discern which of them is the most conducing, is the Work of an exact and well-poised Judgement. To affirm That because every Man hath an Interest 
H. p. 27.  what to choose, therefore that which suits with every Man's Interest, cometh up to the Public Interest, Is in the first Place not true; For it most frequently falls out that Particular Men have a Private Interest of their own differing from if not contrary to the Public One, by which they are more potently inclined then by their Affection to the Public; But secondly if it were always true the Difficulty is left still remaining; For to suppose that every Man in a Popular Assembly should in a matter of State be able to discern his true Interest, is to suppose the Meanest and most unqualified of the People infallible in those things, where the most Consummate Politicians do often mistake, And is besides repugnant to the Experience of all Commonwealths, whose Histories are full of Examples of pernicious Counsels which have been embraced by the People.  
Notwithstanding all that has been said, it must be confessed that a Commonwealth gains one great Advantage by the Debate of the Senate; For the People being composed of Ignorance, Obstinacy, and Tumult would certainly in a Moment tear to pieces any Business that should be thrown among them; Whereas by reserving the Debate to the Senate, the People have no other employment but to let fall a little piece of Linen at all Adventures into one of two Boxes, So that being thus brought within a Disjunction of the Matter, It can be but an even lay against them that they do Miscarry.   

CHAP. VI  
Whether the Senatusconsulta, or Decrees of the Roman Senate had the Power of Laws?  
IN discussing this Question it will in the first Place be necessary to make known what is to be understood by the Word Laws. And though it be easy to take up several Definitions of Law, none is so appropriate to the present Subject as that of Justinian. Lex est quod Populus Romanus Senatorio Magistratu interrogante (veluti 
Instit. de jur. nat. Parag. ● 4.  Consul) constituebat. This Definition puts a difference between Leges and Plebiscita, which having not been attended to by Ateius Capito in Gellius, He involves himself; For the Plebiscita were such Constitutions as without the Senate or the Intervention of any Senatorian Magistrate were framed by the Common People under the Authority of their Tribunes. At first Obedience was due from the Romans only to such Laws as were established by the Votes of the People (including the Senate,) and had been proposed by some of the greater Magistrates: But after that the Plebs or Common People had by their Seditions gained ground so far upon the Senate, as to obtain the Tribunes a Magistracy elected out of their own Body, They soon began to frame Orders called Plebiscita, which at the beginning obliged only their own Order, and concerned not the Nobility, but were after a while improved to the full Authority of Laws. whether this were enacted by the Lex Horatia, the Lex Publilia, or the Lex Hortensia, as is by various Authors variously reported, Or Whether the later of these Laws were any more than a reviving of the former, We shall not be concerned to inquire; It will be enough to take notice that the Plebiscita having attained the Power of Laws, Pomponius had 
Digest. de Orig. Juris leg. 9  very good Reason to observe Quod inter Plebiscita & Legem species constituendi interessent, Potestas eadem esset.  
As the Plebiscita or Decrees of the Common People were not Laws, nor ever so called, and yet had the whole Power of Laws, So the Senatusconsulta or Decrees of the Senate had the same Power. Senatusconsultum est quod 
Instit. de jur. nat. Parag. 5.  Senatus jubet atque constituit. Nam cùm auctus esset Populus Romanus in eum modum, ut difficile esset in unum eum convocari, Legis sanciendae causâ; aequum visum est, Senatum vice Populi consuli. And lest Justinian should be thought to have lived in too remote an Age, to be a Witness in this Case, We have a much earlier Testimony of Pomponius to the same Purpose. Quia difficilè Plebs convenire coepit, Populus multò difficiliùs in tantâ turbâ hominum, Necessitas ipsa curam Reipublicae ad Senatum deduxit. 
Digest. sup. eod.  Ita coepit Senatus se interponere: & quicquid instituisset observabatur. Idque jus appellabatur Senatusconsultum. With which agrees that of 
Digest. inf. de Leg. & SC.  Ulpian, Non ambigitur Senatum jus facere posse.  
To determine at what time the Senatusconsulta attained to the Power of Laws, is more than I will undertake; It is very probable that this was not established at Once, but grew on by insensible Degrees. But for Mr Harrington without the least proffer of any Probation to affirm, That the Senatusconsulta were not Laws in that they were Senatusconsula, or proposed by 
H. p. 31.  the Senate, but in that They were allowed by Justinian or the Prince, in whom was now the Right of the People, is to take to himself greater Authority than ever was given to the Dictator. For in the first Place it is manifest by the order of the Discourse both in the Institutions and the Digests, That the Senatusconsulta had attained the Power there affirmed to belong to them before the time of the Emperors. And then the Occasion by which the Senatusconsulta are said to have grown into that Power, was the Difficulty of Assembling the People for making of Laws, by which it is necessarily inferred, That the People had not then passed away the Right of making Laws, nor by the Lex Regia invested the Emperor with it.  
I need not conceal that Mr Harrington in this Point walks in a Path traced out for him by Hotoman; Who indeed accuses Tribonian of Error or Assentation, And says that the Senatusconsulta had not the Power of Laws before it was given them by the Emperors, who by that thought to fortify the Power they had usurped over the People. But We must be cautious in admitting Hotoman's Judgement in these Matters; For He was not only a professed Condemner of Tribonian's Labours in compiling that Body of Civil Law which is at present extant in the World, but having been during the Civil Wars of France engaged in a Popular Faction, He acquired there some Bitterness of Spirit against Kings, which He frequently discovers in his Writings. If it be Hotoman's Authority which must bear Me down in this Point, I shall cover myself with the Authority of Cujacius, Connanus, Rivallius, Tholosanus, Gothofred, Calvin, Schardius, and the whole stream of Interpreters who run on the other side: If Hotoman's Arguments are thought strong enough to carry it, I must desire they may be examined, and then they will appear to prove no more than this, That whereas Caesar had left the Election of half the Magistrates, with some other small Remains of Power in the People's hands, Tiberius transferred all to the Senate: Which is so far from making good his Assertion, that it is a strong Presumption of the Contrary, Seeing it is not likely that by such an Innovation in Favour of the Senate, Tiberius would have incurred the Discontent of the People, if they had not been habituated in other Cases to see such Power in the Senate's Possession.  
It was not then by any new Power conferred by the Emperors, but only by their Permission to retain an Ancient One, that the Decrees of the Roman Senate had the Power of Laws, and as such found place in the Compilement of the Roman Laws by Justinian. That the S C. Macedonianum (which I wonder so great a Master as Mr Harrington should call Macedonicum, and not have skill enough to distingnish the Adjective derived of Macedonia, One of the Noblest Provinces in Greece, from that other which sprang of Macedo an infamous Usurer at Rome in the time of Vespasian) is of a younger Date than the first Roman Emperor I willingly allow, and make no difficulty in confessing as much of almost all the S C. mentioned in the Body of the Law: For the more ancient Ones having from time to time been wholly repealed, or in part reform by succeeding Constitutions, they were omitted by Justinian in his Compilement, whose Design it was to cut off all antiquated and useless Laws, and leave only such new Ones as continued in Force. We are deprived of the accurate knowledge of 
Aymar. Rival. Hist. Jur. Civ. lib. 3.  these Ancient Senatusconsulta by the loss of that Instrument into which both They and the Plebiscita, from the time of their first Institution, were collected by Vespasian: Yet it is not very hard to pick out considerable Footsteps of them, As the two Senatusconsulta against the passing of Rubicon by any Roman General with an Army, still extant upon old Marbles; The S C. Antonianum, Fannianum, and others mentioned by Gellius; The Form of the SC. Summum or Supremum, by which the whole Commonwealth was put into the Hands of One or both the Consuls, from whom after that lay not Appeal to the People; The several Senatusconsulta so frequently spoken of by Cicero, both in his Epistles and Orations; And finally in the Body of the Law itself (not to hunt after other Places) Digest. de Colleg. & Corp. l. 3. The Senatusconsulta there referred to were One of them made A. V C. 685. L. Caecilio & Q. Marcio COSS. And the other A. U. C. 697. Lentulo & Metello COSS. (both before Caesar's second Consulate from which the Roman Empire bears Date) as is out of Cicero and Asconius proved by the learned Gothofred.  
The Solution of this Question may give Birth to a New One, Whether Mr Harrington be the better Civil Lawyer or Mathematician?   

CHAP. VII  
Whether the Ten Commandments were proposed by God or Moses, and Voted by the People of Israel?  
THis Chapter is a Peculiar, and claims an Exemption from the Ordinary Rules by which Political Disputes are Governed; For though God has declared Universally That by Him Kings reign, yet in reference to the People of Israel He was pleased to own a more particular Concernment, And did by an express Declaration of his Will to and by Moses, both at first enact their Laws and Model their Government, and reserve to himself the Result of their most important Affairs. So that whereas an Error concerning the Frame of any other Government amounts at most but to a Deficiency of Understanding or Diligence, a Mistake in that of Israel may easily become an Impiety, in as much as it may imply a false or Scandalous Conception of God's Actions. The Consideration of this begat in Me at first a Tenderness in Reference to this Subject, and presently after a Resolution to leave it in the hands of the Clergy, upon whom it had also been obtruded by Mr Harrington. At present I must go on to profess that his having in his last Book singled out so weighty a new Adversary, can be no Temptation to Me to change that Resolution, or undertake any part of this Dispute.   

CHAP. VIII.  
Whether a Commonwealth coming up to the Perfection of the Kind, come up to the Perfection of Government, and have no flaw in it.  
I Am not ignorant of the Advantage Mr Harrington may seem to gain in this and the two next Chapters, by having inverted the Order of his own Assertions and my Replies; For passing by the first and second, He falls here upon his third Assertion, and in that fixes upon the fourth and fift Branches. But I am not willing to contend about a Matter of no greater Consequence, but will rather embrace his own new Method, and take the Question as He has stated it, first examining the fourth Branch or matter of Fact, concerning Lacedaemon and Venice, And then giving my Opinion about the Fift, That a Commonwealth notwithstanding all its pretensions to equality, is not secure from being infested with Sedition.  
Mr Harrington was told by the Considerer, That if there appears to have been a more than Ordinary Calm in the state of Lacedaemon, this was not so much to be attributed to the Form of their Government, as to their severe Education and affected Poverty, by which all things that served as Baits to Sedition, were driven out of the Country: So that it can not be Rational to expect the same Effects from the same Government, where the same Education and manner of Life is wanting. Since He has been content to spare himself the Pains of taking Notice of this, I shall suppose it does not stand in need of any farther Elucidation, unless perhaps in the Discovery of the Lacedaemonian Agrarian it prove convenient to insist a little upon it.  
To descend then to his Answer to what I had objected about the frequent Insurrections of the Helots'; He says that Lacedaemon is 
H. p. 40.  either to be considered as not taking in the Helots', and then she was an equal Commonwealth, or taking them in, and so she was unequal. This is just the Man in the Fable who inquired of the Oracle, Whether the Sparrow in his Fist would come out Dead or alive, when it was in his own Power to make the choice; So Mr Harrington will have the Power, according as it suits with his Occasions, to make Lacedaemon an equal or an unequal Commonwealth. But to make short, If she were an equal Commonwealth, What has He to say to the Seditions of the Helots'? If she were Unequal, Why did he play the Mountebank in using her as the Example of an Equal One?  
A second sort of Instances alleged by Me to prove Lacedaemon not to have been free from Seditions, were the Contests which have happened about the Succession to the Crown. These, says Mr Harrington, being determined by the Ephori, that is by a Court of Justice, 
H. p. 41.  and not by the Sword, it is most ridiculous to infer from thence that the Government is Seditious. Hold a little; Can those Controversies be said to be determined by a Court of Justice, when the Interessed Parties make their Appeal to their own Sword, And are able to persuade a Foreign Prince to draw his also in their Quarrel? If any Member of a Commonwealth being discontented have Interest and Power enough to fill his Country with Foreign Armies, I think that Man would not seem very Sober who should at that time go about to applaud that Country for not being Subject to Seditions.  
But this was after Lysander and the Spoils 
Ibid.  of Athens had broken the Agrarian and so ruined Lacedaemon. When I first made use of these Examples, I could not foresee that Mr Harrington would be so easy in parting with those Advantages which He pretended to draw from the Agrarian of Lacedaemon: But now that He is willing to allow the Agrarian of Lacedaemon was not sufficient to preserve that Commonwealth, but was itself overbalanced by the ready Money brought in by Lysander, I have no reason but to be content also, and to remit him for my farther Thoughts in this Particular to the Chapters of the Balance and Agrarian. Only I must desire Him that when among his Proselytes (whether it be in the Circle or the Ruelle) he Plumes himself over the Commonwealth of Lacedaemon, He would be so Ingenuous as to strike all the time after Athens was taken, which is a matter of 200 years, out of the Account, And shut up the Glories of that Commonwealth with the Actions of Lysander, from which by a Common mistake of History, they have hither to been thought to bear Date.  
The Considerer brought Instances of a third sort of Seditions in Lacedaemon, which it seems prove not for Mr Harrington's Convenience to remember; There is no scarcity in History of such Instances, and it will not be unseasonable to commend a few more of them to his Forgetfulness. First the Sedition of those young Men who (Because their Mothers were unmarried Women, such as the state had for greater Population enjoined to make use of a Promiscuous Propagation) were called Parthenia, and after they were suppressed 
Arist. Polit. lib. 5. c. 7.  were sent to inhabit Tarentum in Italy. Then the Sedition of them who during the Masseniac War demanded a new Division of the Lands. After that the Attempt of King Pausanias to make himself absolute Master of the Commonwealth. And then the two dangerous Conspiracies in the Neck of one another during the Theban Invasion, in the first of which about 200 discontented Persons had seized upon the Temple of Diana, one of the strongest and most defensible Quarters of the City, from whence it 
Plut. in Ages.  would have been very difficult to drive them out, had not Agesilaus by a sudden Fetch of Wit cheated them out of their Post and Resolution; The second consisted of a Cabal of Spartans' of good Quality who had their secret Assemblies for the Innovating Public Affairs, And when they were detected, the Senate durst not bring them to an open Trial, but they were privately executed by the Authority of Agesilaus and the Ephores, whereas before that time no Spartan had ever been put to Death without the due form of Justice. These Instances being all either older than Lysander, or immediately upon his time, are not liable to any of Mr Harrington's exceptions, but serve abundantly to evince, that Lacedaemon has not been exempted from the Fate of all other Commonwealths, but has had her Portion of seditions.  
As for the City of Venice, though she be possessed of several Advantages by her situation, yet she is not at all beholden to that, if we believe Mr Harrington, for her tranquillity within Doors; For says he, she is like a man in a 
H. p. 41.  Citadel who thereby may be the safer from his Enemies, but ne'er a whit the safer from Diseases. But before we can allow of this similitude, We must desire him to remember, That as in the Body of man, so in a Commonwealth, some Diseases are like Favours caused by a Disorder in the Blood or Humours, others like Plagues are communicated by an Externall Contagion; From the first indeed the situation of Venice gives her not any security, but against the last it is a sovereign Antidote, And of this Family are the Diseases most frequently incident to a State. Of old the Lacedaemonian & Cretan Republics scarce differed in their Constitution, the Lacedaemonian being but a Copy wrought by Lycurgus after the Cretan Original; yet the Cretans were never molested with any insurrections of their slaves, from which the Lacedæmonians, in any the least Public Adversity, were rarely free; And the cause of this Diversity assigned by Aristotle is, That the Argives, Messenians and Arcadians, all neighbouring States, did continually foment the Discontents of the Lacedaemonian slaves, But Crete being an Island, no Enemy was near enough to tempt their slaves to a Defection. In like manner the Venetian Republic being comprehended within her Islands, she by that situation is secured from those Practices by which her Enemies might endeavour to excite seditions among her subjects.  
Though the City of Venice itself is seated out of the reach of all Enemies, her Frontier extends to two very dangerous Ones, the great Turk, and the House of Austria, whose known Rapacity obliges her to a great deal of Modesty and Reservedness at home; And though the Frontiers of all states are bounded by the Territories of other Princes, Yet all have not such Potent Neighbours, against whom their whole Care and Power is always necessary: Those who have, will in all Probability think themselves concerned not to weaken their Force by any Domestic Tumults, there being nothing more Natural than That the Fear of a Common Enemy should preserve Union and Agreement between Friends. This Truth is observed to have been very Operative with the Romans, who were not overrun with the Seditions of the Nobility and People, before that by the Destruction of the emulous Power of Carthage, They were freed from the Fear and Danger of any Common Enemy.  
If I produced Examples of Seditions at Venice; which are older than the last Reiglement 
H. p. 40.  (this Word was thought no bad English by the Lord Bacon) in the time of Piero Gradenigo, I made Use of my just Liberty, Mr Harrington having not any where put in a Bar against such Examples: Yet now that He has restrained the Inquiry within the Compass of that Reformation, I am willing to omit the Mutiny upon Occasion of the new Impositions in Duke Rinieri Zeno's time, with all other examples which might be added of Seditions before the Reign of Gradenigo. And if the Matter be thus stated, What hurt if We grant him all that He demands? That in the whole World, through the course of all Ages, there may be found one Commonwealth, which by the help of those concurring causes already mentioned, has for something above 300 years been free from Seditions. Is this that Giant Argument which must extirpate Monarchical Government out of the World, and in spite of Fate reduce Us all to a Commonwealth?  
Yet even this Liberality is more than Mr Harrington can with Honesty receive, as long as the Actions of Bocconi, Tiepoli, and Faliero, manifest that Venice has been disturbed with Seditions even since her last Reformation. He endeavours indeed to persuade that those Actions do not imply any Sedition in the Government; For says He, Bocconi would have killed the Duke and was hanged before he could do it, 
H. p. 42.  Felton did kill a Duke and was hanged afterwards. Under favour the Cases are not at all alike; Felton (though perhaps animated by zeal) killed the Duke upon a private Revenge; Bocconi went about to kill the Duke that he might afterward change the Government; Felton made use of no other assistance but his own Arm, Bocconi engaged many Complices. If We would find a Parallel in the Venetian story for Felton's Assassinate, We must not take Bocconi, but Andrea Contarini, who being repulsed in his suit for an Employment, grew into that Vindicative Passion against Duke Foscaro, that 
Sabell. Dec. 3. lib. 1.  He attempted his Life, and had undoubtedly taken it away, if the blow had not been diverted by the next Person from Foscaro's Breast to his Face. But this being only the Issue of a private Quarrel, He does not find Me making any Advantage of it, Faliero and his Complices, continueth He, would have destroyed the great Council, but were hanged before they could do it, Vaux and his Accomplices would have blown up the Parliament but were hanged before they could do it; Therefore England was in this Relation a Seditious Government, else why was Venice? I do not know that the Considerer ever undertook to prove that the Government of England was always free from Seditions; If He had, that One Instance of the Powder Treason had been enough to confute Him. Such attempts, as they are of a more dangerous Nature, so they deserve a Name of more Horror, than Seditions: For Seditions, like storms gathered a far of, give some warning before They fall, There is Room for Prudence to seek some way to divert them, The Interposition of Moderate and Acceptable Persons does often prevent or soon pacify them, At worst their Fury may be avoided by a speedy Retreat; But these secret Conspiracies, like violent subterraneous Eruptions, in a Moment destroy all, And if they be not discovered before the Execution (which no state be it either a Monarchy or Republic can by its Orders have any Security to do) the Public is involved in an inevitable Ruin.  
The Conspiracy of Tiepoli Mr Harrington confesses came to blows, yet can not Venice be called a Seditious Commonwealth. You find no 
H. p. 43.  man accusing Rome of Sedition in that she had a Manlius or a Melius who dangerously affected Monarchy, etc. Yet Florus has placed the Account of Manlius his attempt under the Title de Seditionibus, and Livy in relating the same Action imploies the word Seditio five or fix times: But to let that pass. It would have been fairly done and might have prevented many mistakes, if where He interprets the Words of his Lexicon, He had told Us what He understands 
H. p. 84.  by this Word Sedition: In this Place He seems to limit it very oddly, allowing it only to signify, in a Commonwealth the Dissension of the People and Senate, in a Monarchy by a Nobility that of the King and Nobles, in a Monarchy by Arms that of the Prince and Soldiery, because these only can be derived from the Orders of the Government. By this Rule the Contest of the Fregosis and Adorni at Genova, not being between the People and the Senate, but between two Factions of the Nobility, was no Sedition; Nor by the same Rule are the late Insurrections at Naples and Moscow to be reputed Seditions, For they were not excited by the Nobility or Soldiery, but by the Common People. This is a very poor Evasion, for there was incumbent upon Mr Harrington an Obligation to prove, That an equal Commonwealth (of which he produced Venice as an Example) had no flaw in it, and was such as No Man could have the Interest or Power to disturb with Sedition. Of this He has not performed the least part, but endeavours to put Us of with an impertinent Nicety about the Notation of the Word Sedition. Now for what Purpose serves this Pretention to shut the great Gate of Sedition, if so many back Doores of Disorder be left open by which Misery and Destruction may enter into a Commonwealth? As if it were not all One, if a Man must necessarily receive a Mortal Wound, Whether it be given him with a Scimitar or a Penknife. Besides all this Mr Harrington bestows a large Fallacy upon Us in the Application of this Example: For if the Freedom of Venice from Seditions be only to be understood in reference to the Agreement of the Senate and People, the Commonwealth of Oceana is like to gain very little Credit or Security from it; In Venice the People (as We are often told) are the Grand Counsel, all of them Men of Noble Extraction and Excellent education, not actually armed, constantly residing under the view of the Magistrates, in number not exceeding three thousand, so that the Public Employments being very many make swift Returns as they circulate through them. In Oceana the People are no less than two hundred thousand, having Arms in their hand, made up of Men of all Ranks and Conditions, inhabiting the face of a wide-spread Country, and few of them having Rational hopes to attain any Considerable Magistracy. Let any Man weigh the Oppositions in the Temper of these Commonwealths, and then judge whether there can be any good Inference made from the Quietness of the One to the stability of the other. To Me the Consequence looks like that of the Young Gentleman, who because he had never seen a storm upon his Father's Fishpond, concluded there could not be any upon the Caspian Sea.  
But though all what has been said concerning Lacedaemon and Venice should be admitted, Mr Harrington is still secure; At most He can but lose a brace of Examples, and be put to say (as He does of Florence and Genua in a like Case) that if Lacedaemon and Venice have been disturbed with Seditions, than they also must have been unequal Commonwealths: For in 
H. p. 46.  general it is most certain, That a Government which attains to perfect equality hath such a Libration in the Frame of it, that No man in or under it can contract such Interest or Power, as should be able to disturb the Commonwealth with 
H. p. 36.  Sedition. And the whole Commonwealth of Oceana being the Exemplification of such an equal Government, If Men are still to seek for a Commonwealth that has been free from Seditions, the Fault is their own that they make no more haste to come under so happy a Government. This then is a state of the Question which ought to be determined by Experiment rather than Argument; But the Ingredients to the Experiment (the safety of three Nations) being of two great Expense, We are obliged to better Husbandry, and must be content to make our Judgement of the future Successes of this Government by the Paper Model of it which has been given Us, And examine Whether that contains any Security, that this Government has no Possibility of being disturbed with Sedition: The Truth or Falsehood of which Proposition will best be discovered, by referring the particular Frame of the Commonwealth of Oceana, to the General Idea of Government.  
The Apprehension of a Disability in every particular Man (or at least in every particular Family) of preserving by his own single Power either his Life or any thing useful to life, was the first inducement of Mankind to come under Government; Now it was impossible to establish any Government without a Sovereign Power vested in some One Man or Assembly of Men, For without that Every particular Man must still have been left to the Protection of his own strength, and must have continued to do all other Men whatsoever Mischief did any way conduce to his own Profit or Preservation, the avoiding the Inconveniences of which Life was that which Men intended by submitting themselves to Government; And therefore every Particular Man was necessitated to part with his Native Power and intrust it with the Sovereign, whose Actions He did thereby Authorize and make his own. The Sovereignty being thus fixed, The next work was to enact Laws, or prescribe Rules of behaviour both in Reference of the Service to himself which the Sovereign thought fit to require, and the Intercourse or Commerce between every Particular Man united under him. But here it soon began to appear how irregular the Passions of Man are, and how infirm and Erroneous his Discourse, For Men presently endeavoured to resume the Liberty which They had so lately parted with, and violated those Laws which had been newly Authorised by themselves. Yet the Inconvenience was not great, as long as this Irregularity exceeded not a few Persons, such as were apparently too weak to resist the Sovereign Power; For then these Offences, as Murder, Theft, and the like, were presently attended by the Punishments ordained for them by the Sovereign, and the Facinorous Persons being made Examples of Justice; served to contain other Men within the Bounds of their Duty.  
But if the Number of those who were Desirous to resume the Power they had parted with, or who otherwise by reason of their Crimes were concerned that the Course of Justice should be intercepted, did at any time prove great enough to bear up against the Sovereign Power, Then were Matters reduced again to a Condition of War, and Government with all the Pacts on which it had been founded trampled under Foot. It may seem contrary to Reason that the Motives which were at first strong enough to make Men submit to Government and Laws, should afterward prove too weak to enforce their Obedience to them; And without doubt if Men did in all their Actions govern themselves by Calm and solid Reason, They would never hearken so far either to the stimulations of their own Passions, or to the Incitements of other Men, as to be engaged in a Design of reversing the Sovereign Power, For the greatest Mischiefs that can be suffered by any Government, are not comparable to those Occasioned by the Absence of Government when Men live in the Wild and Lawless condition of War, Nor can it be any thing but Madness voluntarily to expose one's self to Misery for the taking away a Power, in room of which another equal Power must of Necessity be substituted. Yet Experience teaches Us that this is too little to make the World Wise, at which We ought no more to wonder, then that the Certainty of Punishment should not be enough to make men abstain from violating Laws, Nor the Fear of Hell Torments (even to those who are sufficiently persuaded of the Certitude of them) to keep Men from sinning. So that the Wisdom of those Men is a little to be suspected, who think any Governors can be secured, by the unreasonableness that would be in their Subject's Disobedience; For there ever were and will eternally be some Men who will mistake in this Point, and think it their Interest to subvert the Sovereign Power.  
This False Opinion has been very much helped forward by the Sense of those Pressures which are sometimes sustained under Government; For whilst Men considering only their private Utility expect to live free from all Incommodity, They usually charge the Government with those Grievances which are inseparable from the infirm Condition of Humanity, or perhaps are Consequences of their own Inconformity to the true and Necessary temper of Subjection; There being nothing which Men more Naturally forget, Then that the Exercise of Sovereign Power requires a large Expense, toward which it is necessary for every particular Man to contribute a Part, thereby to secure the Rest to Himself.  
Yet it can not be denied That sometimes there has been much of Iniquity in the Manage of Sovereign Power; At first, it is likely, the Person or Assembly trusted with it were known to be of just and Generous Principles, but by Succession the Power being devolved upon Men Weak or Vicious, They have frequently trifled away the Lives, Honours, and Fortunes of their Subjects, which They ought not to have employed but upon just and Probable Occasions. The Desire to prevent this Inconvenience brought forth an Expedient into the World, commonly known under the Name of mixed Government, in which, Though there seem to be a Sovereign Instituted, the People do not part with their whole Power to him, but retain some Part of it in their own Hands; So as to some Actions in which the Lives and Fortunes of every particular Man seem most concerned (such are the making Laws and raising Money, and the like) the Sovereign in appearance can do nothing by himself, but the Consent of the People by their Collective or Representative Body is still necessary. But this Expedient (though in some Places it might be for a while by reason of some external Accidents not unprosperous) fell short of effecting the thing desired, And had besides this irreparable Breach in it, That while the Persons to whom the several Parts of Sovereign Power were thus committed, fell into little Jealousies and Contests about their several Respective Rights and Privileges, the Government was weakened, and left as it were without Legs or Arms; And when these little Jealousies came to be improved into open Dissensions, the several Parties assuming to themselves the Exercise of the whole Sovereign Power, and the Advantages remaining with either not being conspicuous enough to determine the Matter otherways, the Nation which happened to be the Seat of so unfortunate a Controversy was necessarily reduced into a State of War; From which it has seldom been known to have been redeemed, but by destroying that Mixture which was pretended to, and rendering one of the Parties absolute in their Power.  
Beyond this I know but of One Artefice to which Humane Invention has pretended, and that is to contrive a way how the People may govern themselves without Instituting any Sovereign, so that the Ends of Government may be attained and yet no Man divest himself of his Native Power and Liberty. It is confessed by those Men who endeavour to introduce this kind of Government, that the People in their diffused condition are incapable of all Government; ignorant of such Counsels as are necessary to their Preservation, and unable to put the least part of them in Execution: Therefore it is of Necessity that the People should be assembled together, that there should be a Senate to consult, and Magistrates to Execute. But the advantage of this Government is pretended to consist in this, That the People not parting with their Power, but reserving to themselves the last Result in all Business, They are secured from all Injury and Oppression, seeing the People can not be supposed to agree to do themselves Hurt: And as for the Magistrates and Senate they can not be Authors of any Violence, because they shall have only a very limited Power, the Exercise of which also is terminated within the Compass of a few Months, after which they are again to be melted down into the Mass of the People, from which They were at first separated. In Fabricating this great Engine, and contriving all the Movements and Ressorts belonging to it consists the whole Mystery of Popular Government; Of which the most perfect Model, that ever was produced Mr Harrington assures Us is his Commonwealth of Oceana. So that we need only to examine that Commonwealth by the Notions & Maxims already laid down, to know Whether Popular Government has that advantage over all other Governments, as to have no Flaw in it, and not to be exposed to a Possibility of being disturbed with Sedition.  
In the first Place it is manifest that Popular Government is equally with any other Government exposed to this Inconvenience; That Particular Men will have an Interest to disturb it with Sedition; For it being impossible there should be any Government without Laws, and all Laws consisting either in a Prohibition of doing somewhat which before it was free to do, or in a Command of doing somewhat which before might have been omitted, Men must under Popular Government also needs regret the loss of that Liberty which was Natural to them. If it be objected that under Popular Government Men give their Consent to the enacting of all Laws, and therefore can not be rationally thought averse from what was their own Act, It must be remembered that in all other Government also, every Man did by that One General Act of resigning his Power and Authorising the Actions of the Sovereign, give his Consent to all the established Laws, which notwithstanding is known to be insufficient for enforcing a Plenary Obedience to Laws. And it is little less than ridiculous to think, That when under Popular Government Men have committed such Crimes as by the Laws of it deserve Death, They should not apprehend it to be their Interest, by disturbing the Government with Sedition to secure, if it be possible, their own Lives. Whensoever therefore under Popular Government, the number of those whose offences have rendered them liable to the severity of Laws, is considerable enough to qualify them for the Attempt, Popular Government has no more security than any other of being free from Seditions. Of this Original and Extraction as to the main, was Catiline's Attempt upon the Roman Commonwealth.  
Secondly, The Constitution of the Commonwealth of Oceana supposing a Senate and a Representative of the People called the Prerogative Tribe, consisting of about thirteen hundred Men, I ask Whether that Representative (taking the Senate and present Magistrates with it) be endued with the Sovereign Power, that is such as cannot be resisted by any Man or Men within the Commonwealth of Oceana? If they have such Power, Than it is manifest They may whensoever they think it their Interest, perpetuate this power, and by repealing the Orders of Rotation, render themselves a standing Assembly, which dashes to pieces the whole frame of popular Government, and puts the public Affairs (which is contrary to the Design and supposition of a free Commonwealth) into the hands of a Sovereign Assembly. Now that the Representative may come to think this their Interest is manifest also; For the Desire of Power being Natural to man, a far greater share of Power remains with every particular Man, when the Svereign Power is divided among thirteen hundred, than when the same Power is divided among two hundred thousand men. It is very true, as Mr Harrington has observed That the Power or Effect of a greater People is 
H. pag. 39  proportionably greater than the Power or Effect of a lesser people; But that is not to be brought to account under this Head, For it is not now inquired, Whether the Power of thirteen hundred or two hundred thousand Men be greater, but Whether if the same Power belong to thirteen hundred or two hundred thousand men, Every particular person of the thirteen hundred will not have more Power than every particular person of the two hundred thousand men. And what has been said of Power the same is to be understood of Riches. So that in the Commonwealth of Oceana, the Magistrates, Senate, and Prerogative Tribe for the time being, have both power and Interest to dissolve the Frame of the Government. And that a Representative is not incapable of making such an attempt as this, will, (it is not improbable) easily find Belief with those who are acquainted with the Actions of these last eighteen years.  
But now let us resume the other member of the Disjunction, and suppose that the Magistrate, Senate and Prerogative Tribe, have not the Sovereign power, but that it remains still with the Body of the People in Oceana. Hence it must follow that in the Commonwealth of Oceana there is no Sovereign power at all, And that the People of it are either in a Condition of War, or ready to fall into it. For the people of Oceana being too numerous and too much dispersed to Assemble Personally in one place, They cannot concur to any Act but by their Representative; But that Representative not having the Sovereign power, there is not any such Power constituted, and consequently every Particular Man is left to the Protection of his own Power and strength, which is the Condition of War, and implies the Absence of all Government.  
It will, perhaps, be replied that the Sovereign Power resides in the lesser Assemblies, as the Parish, Hundred, or Tribe, where the People personally concur to the Election of their Deputies: But this is not to make One but a great many Sovereign Powers, and to shatter One great Commonwealth, into as many little Ones as there are Parishes in Oceana. Nor is the Difficulty removed by it, For these lesser Sovereign Assemblies being not put into any Method of concurring in any Common Opinion, but by the Deputies they send to the Representative or Prerogative Tribe, If those Deputies be sent with Sovereign Power, the Commonwealth relapses into the Danger before insisted on of being supplanted by that Representative.  
But if these Deputies be not sent to the Prerogative Tribe with Sovereign Power, than the Prerogative Tribe has no such Power and by Consequence can not make Laws, or impose any other Resolution upon the Commonwealth; If notwithstanding this the Preragative Tribe does de facto make Laws, the Authority with which they are armed, is not that of the Representative itself, but of the lesser Sovereign Assemblies, who in that They do not declare their Dissent, are presumed to allow of such things as have been resolved on by their Deputies. So that upon the Matter, Oceana, is not a Single Commonwealth, but a Compunded One made up by a  League of so many Commonwealths as there are lesser Sovereign Assemblies in Oceana. Now the Leagues between Sovereigns are of no longer Duration than their Common Interest, which whensoever it happens to be divided, such Leagues Vanish; And therefore whensoever the lesser Sovereign Assemblies in Oceana come to be divided in their Interest, the Commonwealth must fall in Pieces. But that They may come to be so divided is probable, if not necessary; Anciently They were divided both in respect of the Saxon Heptarchy, and the Welsh Princes under the Norman Kings; The difference of Language (One of the greatest separators of Men's Affections) is not quite worn out; The inhabiting the same Island is not a sufficient Argument of Union, for then Scotland and We should make but One Nation; In fine, there can be no cause assigned of the Union of this Nation under One Government but the Power of former Princes, which by the Institution of this new Commonwealth is quite obliterated. More than all this, The Concernments of the Several Parts of this Nation are very different in Reference to Propriety and Riches; some Parts subsist upon Mines and Cole, Others upon Manufacture, Some upon Corn, Others upon the Profits of Cattle, London and the Sea Ports upon Exportation and Importation; And it is not possible but that when those several things come to be regulated by Laws, the Different Parts of the Nation must necessarily espouse very Different Interests.  
This is also very conformable to Experience; Greece was a Country much less than England, The People of it (with an inconsiderable variety of Dialect) spoke the same Language, They had the same Common Enemy the Persian, and were united in many other particular Interests: Yet all this was not enough to reduce them into one great Commonwealth, but We find among them almost as many Republics, as Cities. The Condition of Sicily, Magna Graecia, and the Coasts of Asia serve also to make good the same Observation. Nay in Israel (which Mr Harrington will have pass for a Commonwealth) though the Country was so Narrow, the People all descended of one Family, and cemented together by a Million of common Concernments and Obligations, this Thing is very apparent also; For though it did not produce a total Dissolution of the Government, yet It for some time suspended it, and threw the People into a Civil War, as in the Case of Jephthah between the Men of Ephraim and Gilead, 
Jud. cap. 12. & 20.  and in that of the Levites Concubine, between the Tribe of Benjamin and the rest of Israel.  
There is but One imaginable case more to be put concerning the Sovereign Power in the Commonwealth of Oceana, Which is, That though the People have parted with their Power, They have not entrusted it all in One hand, but have so equally divided it among the Magistrates, Senate, and Prerogative Tribe, that No public Action can be performed without the Concurrence of all; Now there is nothing more improbable than that all these should concur to the Oppressing the People, changing the Government, or disturbing it with Sedition; Then which greater Security is not attainable in Matter of Government. But all this rises no higher than the Case of mixed Government. For the Power being wholly passed from the People, and divided equally among these several Persons, This equality of Power must upon their Disagreement reduce the Commonwealth to a Civil War, seeing it is not otherways to be judged which of them has the Sovereign Power, and by that a Right to the Obedience of the Rest. Now that they cannot long Agree, is a Consequence of that Desire of Power which is confessed to dwell with Man, and will not permit him to rest satisfied with Part of that Sovereign Power, which He may fairly hope to possess Entire. And if there are any Examples of Persons thus Possessed of equal Power, who have for a while maintained a good Correspondence with one another, and so preserved the Commonwealth in Peace, This must not be attributed to the Frame or Temper of the Government, but to some external Cause, such as the Apprehension of some Common Impending danger, Or an over high Estimation of one another's strength, by which there is generated in them a mutual Fear of one another: As two Armies when neither of them has any Visible Advantage of strength, do very often forbear engaging out of a mutual doubt of the Success, which notwithstanding is not a state of Peace, seeing both are intent upon the Opportunities of procuring one another's Ruin.  
It having been thus Proved, That the Commonwealth of Oceana, which was given us as the Example of a most equal Commonwealth, is which way soever the Case be stated, liable not only to Sedition, but which is more, to a total Dissolution, It is at the same time evinced, That a Commonwealth coming up to the Perfection of the kind, comes not up to the Perfection of Government, but has a Flaw in it. I do not suspect that after this Mr Harrington will any longer think fit to accuse Me of huddling things together 
H. p. 40.  or neglecting of Principles; It is true I can not admit of his Principles, because, as I have often told him, They are merely Effects & Consequences of Government, that is no Principles at all. And while He thus goes astray in the Principles, His Labour must needs be unprofitable, both in examining the Models of Former Commonwealth's, and in proposing New Ones of his own; For at this Rate New Models of Government may be contrived with as much ease, as a French Tailor invents new Fashions. It is the Foundation of Government upon undeniable Principles, and the Diductions from them, which render Politics a Complete Science, without which the greatest Conversation with particular Commonwealths can but at most make Men Empirics in Policy.   

CHAP. IX.  
Whether Monarchy coming up to the Perfection of the Kind, come short of the Perfection of Government, and have some Flaw in it?  
IT can not be with Reason expected that I should assert Monarchy to be so far Privileged as not to have a Flaw in it; For having in the preceding Discourse laid it down for a Maxim, That Men will eternally mistake the Point of Government, and think it their Interest to Subvert the Supreme Power, I should now contradict myself by affirming that of Monarchical Government in particular, which I before denied of all Government in General. Yet does not Mr Harrington gain any Advantage by this, For though I confess that Monarchy comes not up to the imaginary Perfection of Government which He dreams of, but is indeed neither in a Monarchy nor a Commonwealth, nor yet in Nature, I am not at all diffident of making Good, That a Supreme Hereditary Monarchy attains to a greater Degree of Perfection, and has fewer Flaws in it then a Commonwealth or any other kind of Government.  
I do not think it needful to repeat either the Principles or Conclusions of the last Chapter, Only it will be useful to examine somewhat more at large the Causes or Reasons why Men are not content with the Government they live under, but do by a continual Endeavour to subvert the Sovereign Power, disturb it with Sedition. Of which in General three Reasons may be assigned.  
The first is a Desire of Immunity from Punishment in such Persons as have by their Crimes rendered themselves obnoxious to the Laws; For it being impossible as long as Men are subject to Passions, but that such Faults will be committed as the Sovereign Power has thought fit to punish with Death or the loss of Estate, The Persons who have committed those Faults will indubitably seek to avoid the Punishment, which can not be done but by raising a Party able to resist the Sovereign Power. And as Criminal Persons seek to avoid Punishment for Crimes already committed, So Persons extremely in Debt or Indigent, who being destitute of that Industry which might procure them a Subsistence in a Regular Way, know not how to live but by Rapine and Invading other Men's Propriety desire to disturb the Government that they may find Security in those Crimes which for the Future they resolve to Commit.  
The second is a Want of Judgement to discern the Miseries which attend War; For when a People have so long enjoyed Peace that the Memory of the wretched Effects of a Civil War is defaced, They are very Frequently deaf to the Admonitions of Wiser Men, to the Histories of former times, and to the Example of other Nations, And so out of mere Wantonness throw away their own Happiness, by suffering themselves to be engaged in a War against the Sovereign, the Consequences of which they had never taken the least pains to Consider. And to this they are very easily brought, whensoever those Men who are by some other Motive engaged to seek the subversion of the Government, have Credit enough with the People to impose a Cheat upon them, by making Use of the Names of Religion or Liberty, or some other like specious Pretence.  
The third is that Desire of Power which Men commonly understand by the Name of Ambition; This seems so twisted with the being of Man that it is thought natural to him, and no more separable than his Affections or Passions. Yet if any Ambitious Man should take himself to a strict Account, and demand a Reason of his own Thoughts and Actions, If He should contemplate Power with all the Dangers, Cares, and Inquietudes entailed upon it, And strip it of that gaudy Dress with which the Deluded World has adorned it, He would find his Pursuit of Power extremely Irrational, unless so far as it did necessarily conduce to his own Preservation. The Desire of self Preservation was (as I said formerly) the first step to Government, and the Institution of Sovereign Power was the Caution that every Man had of every other Man for his Preservation; Yet this did not satisfy, because it quickly appeared that though good Laws were ordained for every Man's Protection, yet they could not always come in time enough to prevent particular Mischiefs, So that Men judged it Rational, besides the general Protection they enjoyed from the Sovereign, to arm themselves with a particular Power against particular Dangers. Nor did Men stop here, but out of their incurable Suspicion of all other Men, They became as much afraid of the Sovereign Power as they were before of one another, And so continually endeavoured to acquire such Power as might even defend them from the Sovereign, which Design could never be thought fully attained by them until the Sovereign Power itself was in their Possession.  
The Desire then of such a Power as may preserve a Man, in such Cases where the Laws are not sufficient to do it, from other private Men, implying a Submission to the Sovereign, and acting in a Method not prohibited by him, can never bring danger to Government. But the Desire of a Power able to defend them from the Sovereign, is properly that Ambition which is the Fountain from whence flow the chiefest Dangers that threaten Government, And is always unjust though more or less condemnable according to the Temper of those who enjoy the Sovereign Power; For if They are just and Virtuous Persons, and use not to make any Invasions on the Lives and Fortunes of their Subjects, this Ambition is the more Criminal because the first Motive to it was false and Irrational; But if they are known Oppressors of the People, and such who consider not that They injure themselves by trampling upon the Lives and Fortunes of their Subjects, It is a little more excusable, being an endeavour (though by an unjust Method) of preserving such Things as deserve not to be wilfully thrown away.  
I have studiously abstained from reckoning the Desire of Riches among the Causes of Sedition; For if it be a Desire of Moderate Riches such as are subservient to the Necessities or Conveniences of Man's Life, or to the attaining Innocent and Honest Pleasures, They may with far greater ease and Probability be acquired by private and Legal Industry then by disturbing the Government; And it is in Experience that those Men who are most taken up with this Design, are of all People the least turbulent, and do most abominate Commotions. But if it be a Desire of excessive Riches, such Riches can not be desirable in themselves but only as They are the Instruments of Power; And so this Desire is to be reduced to the Desire of Power.  
If Revenge, Love, or any other Passion has sometimes given the first Impulse to the Dissolution of Government, these Accidents are so Particular and Infrequent, that they can not deserve to have Place in a General Discourse.  
Having thus in general discovered the first Causes of Sedition in all Government, the next Work must be to show by what Art or Providence the Sovereign may prevent the Mischief, and suspend the Effects in their Causes. And for obviating the first Cause of Sedition, many particular Cares are necessary; As the diligent Execution of Laws, that so every Offence may be overtaken by the Punishment; then the Encouragement of Manufactures and Traffic which fetching Wealth from abroad, cure the Subject of Want and Necessity at home; After that a Prohibition of Excess in such things (as Gaming, Clothes, and the like) by which Men go in Chase of Poverty; And last of all, When notwithstanding all these Cares, Criminal and Indigent Persons grow Numerous, A seasonable Dreyning of them away by a Foreign War or Plantations.  
The Prevention of the second Cause of Seditions consists in having the People sufficiently instructed in the Sad and Miserable Consequences of a Civil War, in Comparison of which the greatest Pressures under the worst of Governments are no Evils. But it must be confessed that this is a Text upon which the Wise part of the World has used in vain to Preach to the Fools, And therefore there is a mixture of Fortune in it, which very much secures those Princes who come in just upon the last Act of a Civil War; For there being no Man then alive in whom there is not a fresh Memory of the Calamities of War, They have them in such Detestation, as that They are willing to suffer any thing rather than be a second time plunged into that miserable Condition.  
Against the third Cause of Seditions, the Virtue and Innocence of the Prince is a Grand Remedy; for if his Subjects find Protection from him against all other Men, and have no just ground to suspect any Prejudice from him in their Lives or Fortunes, It would be desperately unreasonable to enter into any Diffidence of Him, or out of an Ambitious Desire of Power, to seek to subvert the Government. Yet because all Mankind are not Philosophers, And a great part of those over whom Sovereign Power is to be exercised, are not guided by Reason, but misled by Passion and false Consequences, It will be necessary to arm a Sovereign with somewhat more than his own Innocence, and give him a Power sufficient to repress those Brutish and Irrational Subjects.  
Here than it will concern Us to inquire what are the Advantages of the Sovereign over his Subjects. It is manifest that these consist not in the personal strength of a Monarch, nor yet of a Sovereign Assembly; For the first is but the strength of one Man, and the other but of a few Men, who bear no Proportion to those who are to be governed by them: Therefore the Advantages of the Sovereign Power proceed from this, That their Subjects have given up their particular strengths to be employed at the Discretion of the Sovereign, So that in the Sovereign the diffused strength of a Multitude is united in One Person, which in a Monarchy is a Natural Person, in a State an Artificial One procreated by a majority of Votes. The Desire in particular Men of retracting this Gift, or Reassuming the Power they had conferred upon the Sovereign, (which proceeds from some of the Causes already mentioned but most particularly from the third) is the beginning of all Sedition; This at first can be the Desire of but One Man, who upon discovery of Symptoms of like Inclinations may impart it to some Few, and they afterward Communicate it to more, so as at length to be able to form a Party sufficient to disturb the Government with Sedition. So that in Effect, the Advantage of the Sovereign over his Mutinous Subjects, is the same that an United strength has over a divided One, or an Army over a greater Multitude of dispersed and Scattered People. In consequence of which it may be inferred, That the Great Art of Governing (next to that of withdrawing the Causes and Matter of Sedition by the Virtue & Innocence of the Sovereign's Actions) consists in being versed in those Methods by which a Number of Discontented Persons may be hindered from becoming a Party, that is framing such a Correspondence among themselves as to be able to Act with one Common Consent and Design.  
To discourse of the Vigilance of the Sovereign in observing all the Motions of his Subjects, or of the Intelligence He ought to maintain for discovering all their Cabals, belongs not to this Place; These things are according to the different Complexions of Times and Affairs infinitely various, and depend every where upon the particular Sufficiency of the Ministers. Only I may observe, That where there are constant Assemblies of any considerable part of the People which depend not wholly upon the Sovereign, both as to the times of their Convention and Dissolution, and as to the Matter and Manner of their Consulations, such Assemblies do easily become the Cradles of Sedition, and are therefore very Dangerous, and scarce to be with Prudence permitted by the Sovereign.  
Let Us therefore consider a Sedition as ready to go alone, and just fitted to walk abroad and take the Air. The first Steps of it must necessarily be infirm and staggering, For They who first Discover themselves are sure to be immediately attaqued by the United Force of the Sovereign, against which They can have little hope to prevail; For their own Party being unsettled and Raw, And that of the Sovereign form before hand the Odds must needs be very Great; And therefore the Broachers of Seditions, are generally Men altogether Desperate, who despise the Certitude of those Dangers by which all Considering Men are deterred. This then is the Grand Security of all Sovereigns, whether single Persons or Assemblies, That the united Force of their Subjects with which They are invested, is sufficient to suppress the Beginnings of all Seditions, And beyond this No Government has any Annulets that can preserve it; For if some Seditions have been suppressed after they were broke out into actual Civil Wars, That has not been by any Virtue of the Government, but is to be attributed to the same Causes that serve to determine the Successes of Wars between distinct Sovereign Powers. And therefore No Sovereign aught to expect his safety from any Frame or Temper of the Government, or from the settled orders of the Commonwealth, but from his own Virtue in withdrawing the Matter, his Prudence and Dexterity in preventing the Contrivance, And his Celerity and Resolution in suppressing the Beginnings of Seditions.  
What then remains is only to take a View of the particular Method which a Monarch is capacitated to observe, in order to his Security, And to Compare it with the Methods of other Governments. Seeing the first Compact of every Man to part with his private Power, upon which Sovereignty was founded, is by experience found too weak to support the Government, All Monarches have found it necessary to communicate some Part of this Power with which themselves are vested, to some subordinate Ministers who by this have a more peculiar Interest in the safety of the Monarch than the rest of his Subjects, and therefore are more likely in any Danger to stand by him: This Power according to the several Intentions of the Monarch, either upon the Death of the Person to whom it was committed reverts again to the Monarch, or is transmitted to his next Heir, as one from whom the Monarch has reason to expect the same Services; This last Case is the Generation of a Nobility, who use to be distinguished from other Men by such Titles with which the Monarch has thought fit to adorn them. And because Riches (whether in Land or other Revenue) are a principal Fountain of all such Power as is subordinate to the Sovereign Power, either the Nobility uses to have considerable Riches conferred upon them by the Sovereign, or else such Persons as by their own Industry have attained considerable Riches are advanced to be of the Nobility. Thus has a Monarch attained the first Degree of his Security, That there are a considerable Number of Persons who being entrusted with some Portion of Power by him, have by that both an Ability and Interest to defend him against all such as go about to disturb the Government with Sedition; For some of these Persons being present in all Quarters of the Dominion, and enjoying by the Monarch's Authority an united Power, can not be supposed to fail in suppressing the Weak and Disjointed beginnings of all Seditions.  
It has been and still is a Question, Whether it be most advantageous for a Monarch to communicate this Power only by Commission to such Persons as He finds most capable of doing him Service, and that without any Promissory Obligation upon himself either to continue it to their Posterity, or to themselves longer theu his Good Pleasure, Or whether it be best for Him to transmit it to their Posterity, and by that to constitute a Nobility. But I think it will not be hard to determine the Question in favour of a Nobility out of these Considerations.  
First, That there is more Safety in a Nobility then in the other way of temporary Commissions, against a Foreign Enemy; Seeing it is the Interest of the whole Nobility to defend to the utmost Extremity that Monarch, from whom They and their Posterity enjoy a greater share of Power than They have Reason to expect from a Conqueror.  
Secondly, That even against his own People the Security a Monarch gains by a Nobility is greater than He can have the other Way; For there being a radicated Power in a Nobility, the Impressions of Awe and Reverence upon the People are greater from them, than they can be from any temporary Commander.  
Thirdly, It being so natural to all Men to desire the Welfare of their Posterity, a Nobility has greater Interests to preserve the Monarch by whose Favour both They and their Children are possessed of a considerable Power, than They can have who wanting a Promise from the Monorch for the Continuation of this Power, may justly look upon themselves as Tenants at Will, And so may have a Concernment to endeavour by some Innovation in the Government, to asscertain this Power to themselves.  
Yet this is not to be taken Absolutely and without Restriction; For seeing a Nobility, is subject to the same Passions with other Men, a Monarch is not to make Account that the Greatness of the Benefits They enjoy by Him, should be enough to keep his Nobility within the Bounds of Duty: Nay farther, That Ambition which We have Defined to be a Desire of Power sufficient to defend one from the Sovereign Power, is chief incident to the Nobility, because They possessing Much, are most apt to think themselves a Prey considerable enough to tempt the Sovereign's Avarice. And therefore as a Nobility is a Monarch's Guard against the People, so a Monarch may stand in need of another Guard against the Nobility, to secure him against such Dangers as otherwise He might incur from their Ambition.  
These Dangers are of two kinds; For either They proceed from some particular Persons of the Nobility, excelling the rest of their Order in Power or Dignity, Or they arise from the whole Body of the Nobility. If a Monarch has out of the Consideration of nearness of Blood, or his own Affections, or Greatness of Merit, conferred a large share of Power upon one Person or Family, with leave to transmit it to their Posterity, this Power may easily become Matter of Danger, if not to Him, at least to his successors. Thus the Successors of Charles the Great in Germany, and this Hugh Capet in France, by conferring upon some of the Nobility an Hereditary Power over Provinces large enough to raise and maintain an Army, broke those two great Monarchies into a Multitude of little Ones, though the latter of them has had the Fortune to recover, and be again consolidated into one great Empire. At first, no doubt, there were some such Duties reserved by the supreme Monarch as served to manifest the Dependence of these lesser Ones upon him, But they easily degenerating into Matters of mere Form and Ceremony, and the People wanting Eyes to look beyond the next Object; These Dependant Monarches were by their Subjects soon considered as Absolute Ones, and thought to shine by their own Native Light though it were at first derived to them from the great Luminary of the Sovereign Power. Where the Error of former Monarches has thus deformed the Natural shape of Empire, and rendered Government a Monster with more Heads than One, It is it vain for the Prince to expect Security, or for the Subjects to hope for Peace and Tranquillity: For if the exorbitant Power of these Great On●s among the Nobility can not be retrenched, the State can have no Assurance of Safety but that casual One which is obtained from the Content and Satisfaction of these Great Persons; And that is not like to continue longer than they are taken up with some considerable Employment abroad, they being in this like tame Lions, whose Keepers are no longer out of Danger of being torn in Pieces, than they maintain them full gorged.  
The Dangers that arise from the whole Body of the Nobility, are when the Nobility is possessed of a Right to Assemble themselves for the Electing a Successor to the Monarchy, or for making of War and Peace, or for nominating the great Ministers of State, or for performing any other Act which by the Nature of it is inseparable from the Sovereign Power. This Happens either when the Monarch did at first, out of Covetousness of Reigning, accept of the Kingdom with a less share of Power than was necessary for attaining the Ends of Government, or has since parted with this power out of an erroneous belief, That Sovereignty could subsist without it. And if in these Cases the Government has been Seditious, this can be no Argument against a Sovereign Monarch, because those Cases suppose the Prince to want that power which was requifite to make him Sovereign. Though even in these Cases, there want not examples of some able Princes who by their Artifice in Balancing the several Factions of the Nobility, have for a long time preserved themselves and People in safety.  
Where neither some few persons of the Nobility are possessed of excessive power and Command, nor where the whole body of the Nobility has a Right to assemble for the ends before mentioned, It is not imaginable how a Nobility should be dangerous to a Monarch; For though the Nobility are not so great a multitude as the People, yet they are a multitude, and by Consequence exposed, in proportion to the same Difficulties and Dangers in carrying on a Design for disturbing the Government; & the same remedies are applicable against them, which were by them made use of against the People.  
These Remedies are in general two; First that the Monarch have continually in pay a sufficient Militia to be always ready to march for suppressing the first motions or tendency toward a Sedition; Secondly that seeing every Country has some places of strength where a few may be secure against a great number, these Places be kept at the Monarch's Devotion by a convenient proportion of Soldiers, for in this case the Nobility wanting places of Defence to secure themselves at the beginning of their Attempt, And knowing assuredly that they shall be exposed to the danger of being cut in pieces by the Militia entertained by the Monarch, They cannot be supposed so Irrational as out of vain and uncertain Hopes of greater power to incur the forfeit of that of which they are already possessed.  
To assign the number of this Soldiery can never be done, not only because Different Monarchies stand in need of Different Proportions, but the same Monarchy may require Different proportions at different times; Only in general, it may pass for a necessary Maxim, That this Militia ought not to amount to a complete full Army; For besides that the Expense would devonr any Monarch, The experience of the Roman and Turkish Emperors and all other Princes who have kept great Armies as a guard to their Persons and Empire, teach us that this is to walk upon precipices, There being no possibility of preventing such an Army (especially if they lie still without Employment) from acquiring an Interest distinct from that of the Prince. Therefore this Militia must be so instituted as that it can have no Interest besides the Pay it receives from the Monarch, nor any hopes of being safe in their own strength if they should withdraw themselves from the Service and Obedience due to him.  
This is that mixture of a Monarchy by a Nobility, and a Monarchy by Arms in which consists the perfection of Monarchical Government. Nor do I enter into despair of living to enjoy my share of the Felicities which will belong to the Subjects of such a Government, though Mr Harrington be positive in asserting, That the wit of man never found, nor shall find this 
H. pag. 72.  Monarchy, there being no such thing in Nature. And his Reason for this most Tyrannous Confidence, is only this That there is nothing in 
H. pag. 71.  Nature that hath not had a natural effect by some example. I believe Mr Harrington would not think himself sincerely dealt with, if he should be told, There is no such thing in nature as an equal Commonwealth, because there is nothing in Nature that hath not had a Natural Effect by some Example; But the Commonwealth of Oceana is (by his own Confession) 
Ocena. p. 23.  the first example of a Commonwealth that is perfectly equal. It is his own Argument for a Commonwealth, and therefore I do not understand how he can prohibit me the use of the same Logic in Defence of Monarchy, That it is the 
ibid.  Government which if it have been seditious, it hath not been from any Imperfection in the kind, but for want of this mixture in the particular Constitution; which where ever the like hath happened must have wanted this mixture.  
He is willing to suppose that I understand 
H. pag. 70.  France as an instance of this mixture; But that France cannot be an Instance of it is manifest by this, That the Princes of the Blood do there possess such an excessive power, as I have declared inconsistent with this mixture, a consequence of which power have been all the considerable seditions of France in this last age. In many other things I allow that France is not far remote from this mixture, much of which also may be discovered in the Castilian Monarchy, in the administration of the Duke of Florence's Government, and the Pope's Temporal Domivion in Italy. But it must be remembered, That to make good the possibility of this mixture, I am not obliged to produce the Example of a Monarchy that has continued free from Seditions, since I have endeavoured to prove that it is impossible any Government should be altogether free from them: It is abundantly enough if the Reigns of able Monarch; have not been troubled with Seditions, or only with such as have been immediately suppressed, For the art of apprehending and preserving this mixture is not attainable by any universal Rules or Frame of Policy, but is a personal Effect of the Capacity and Experience of every Monarch: And therefore to expect that a weak Prince can long continue to Govern securely by the maxims and Constitutions of a wise predecessor, is all one as to imagine that the Tools of some excellent Artificer falling into the Hands of an ignorant person should serve to make good work.  
And this seems to be the only considerable objection against us, That this mixture cannot 
H. p. 72.  be durable, because the Nobility in this case would not keep down the People, but fetch them up (as did the Barons) into their scale, that together they might weigh down the Army; which is the infallible Consequence of this mixture. Where the Nobility has already got too great Head, and where the Prince by the unseasonable application of an Army goes about to reduce them, I deny not but this may perhaps be the Consequence; But then this Case supposes the Nobility possessed of a power from which They will be excluded by this mixture; And as this mixture takes from them the power so does it the Interest also, it being impossible for the Nobility to League with the People, or fetch them up into their scale, without losing some part of that power which by the Monarch they enjoyed over the People. This Case of the Nobility and People uniting against the Monarch can never happen unless the Monarch is at once become through his own Vices and Cruelty universally odious, and through his Imprudence and Irresolution universally contemptible; And I do with much readiness confess, That such Princes are not to look for security, it being not in the Design of God or Nature, or in the power of Art to make those men Happy who will not cooperate toward the attaining their own Happiness.  
This Temper of a Monarchy is the High-water Mark beyond which no Government can rise; That all other Government must needs fall a great deal short of it I am in the last place to make Evident. And that a popular Government or Commonwealth must do so is apparent by the last Chapter, where it has been proved That this kind of Government is necessarily exposed not only to Sedition but total Dissolution. For a Government by a Sovereign Assembly or Aristocracy, As it is exposed to all the same Original Causes of Sedition with a Monarchy, so it wants the Remedies which consist in Secrecy and Celerity, that are the peculiar Advantages of a single person's Administration: Besides, this Inconvenience belongs particularly to a Sovereign Assembly, that one or more persons of it carrying on a secret Design to change the Government may have Credit enough in the Assembly to corrupt their Consultations, and so make the Assembly an Instrument to their own subversion. Lastly for a Monarchy either by Arms or a Nobility taken singly, This Mixture of both curing the Infirmities of each must necessarily have the Advantage of them.  
If Mr Harrington be of Opinion that I ought to have laid down a particular Model of this kind of Government, I must in this also acknowledge the Difference of my Judgement from his; For though a General Discourse concerning Government may fairly become any Gentleman, the proposing (or imposing rather) a particular Model seems to relish too much of a Design, and wants that Modesty and submission that ought to be in all Private Men.   

CHAP. X.  
Whether a Commonwealth that was not first broken by herself, were ever conquered by the Arms of any Monarch.  
IN this Chapter Mr Harrington is forced to be of the Considerer's mind, though to keep up his Credit, He seems to be upon high Contradictions with Him. For He tells Us that He is not to be argued against out of the little Cities in Asia, which having no considerable Army, if 
H. pag. 75.  they should be subdued by some potent Monarch, concerns the Government no more than if they had been overwhelmed by some Inundation or swallowed up by some Earthquake. This is perfectly conformable to the Considerers sense, who has declared that He thinks the Inference Fallacious which is made from the success of Arms to the perfection of Government. But it concerned Mr Harrington to have thought of this sooner, it being now too late to Retreat with Honour, or to clog that Proposition with Restrictions which had before been so positively and universally laid down by him, That a Commonwealth was never conquered by any Monarch from the beginning of the world unto this Day.  
Yet that the Considerer may have no Temptation to be proud, Mr Harrington lets Him see how he lies at Mercy, and how his project of a Monarchy (whensoever it shall be thought fit to use so killing an Argument) may be totally 
H. p. 74.  ruined by the Example of the King of Yvetot: I acknowledge the great importance of that Argument, and am willing to come to terms with him about it; And so long as he will consent to suppress this Example of Yvetot in exchange of the kindness I promise him not to draw any Argument for the Advantage of Monarchy, from the Ancient and Illustrious Reign of King Oberon.  
But the Considerer must not seem to be left in the possession of any truth, And therefore the first general Answer will not serve Mr harrington's turn, but he goes on to deny that there is any truth in the instances which I brought to prove that Commonwealths have been conquered by Monarches. The first of those was taken from the Commonwealths of the Grecians planted on the Coasts of Asia, concerning which I am challenged to show that they 
H. p. 75.  came under the power of the Lydian and Persian Monarches by Conquest, or otherwise then by the purchase of Croesus his money. I am ashamed that Mr Harrington should thus go on to oblige me; He has taught a new way by Me near thought on, for the dissolution of a Commonwealth; Let a People be united into a Republic, Let their City be fortified with Walls, let them have Arms in their Hands, Nay let the Balance be fixed by an Agrarian Law; To what purpose serves all this? There comes one with a little ready Money in his purse, and He for twenty year's Purchase or thereabouts) buys Lands, Balance, Laws, Liberty and all; And as Larks are caught with Daring, this People being dazzled with a little Gold, are of Free Men content to become slaves to a Monarch. This is so pretty, that I am sorry I can not leave it thus, but am obliged to examine what Herodotus has said in Reference to the way by which Croesus obtained the Asiatic Cities. This Croesus was the first Barbarian We know 
Herod. lib. 1  of who forced some of the Grecians to become his Tributaries, and made others of them his Friends; The Jonians, Aeolians, and Dorians which inhabit Asia, He forced to pay him Tribute, and the Lacedæmonians he made His friends But before the Reign of Croesus all the Grecians were Freevill This for their Subiugation by the Lydian Monarch, concerning the Persian We will once more try our Fortune with a Testimony out of Thucydides; As others by other 
Thucyd. lib. 1. pag. 10.  means were kept back from growing great, so also the Jonians by this, That the Persian Affairs prospering, Cyrus and the Persian Kingdom, after the Defeat of Croesus, made War upon all that lieth from the River Halys to the Sea side, and so subdued all the Cities which they possessed in the Continent; And Darius afterward, when he had overcome the Phoenissian Fleet did the like to them in the Islands. Both which Testimonies are summed up by Strabo, where He tells Us, That the Persians were the first who obtained Dominion over the 
Strabo. l. 15.  Grecians, For though the Lydians had Command of them, it was not through all Asia, but only of a small part of it which lies within the River Halys, and that only for a small time during the Reigns of Croesus and Alyattes. But they being overcome by the Persians, lost to them whatsoever Glory they had gained. For the Persians as soon as they had subdued the Medes, presently made themselves Masters of the Lydians, and brought into Subjection the Grecians in Asia. Upon the Defeat of Croesus the Asiatic Republics had, it seems, recovered their Liberty so far, as to be in a Condition to dispute it with Cyrus, which is clearly employed by Herodotus, when having related the Successes of that War, He says It was the second time those Grecians were brought into Servitude. And though during the prosperous Fortune of the European Grecians many Attempts were made to free the Asiatic Ones from that Yoke, They were finally necessitated to submit to it, being by an express Article of the 
Xenoph. Gr. Hist. lib. 5.  Peace concluded between Artaxerxes and the Grecians (which from the Lacedaemonian Envoyè who negotiated it was called the Peace of Antalcidas) left under the Power of the Persian Kings. With Permission than I say it, This Example does more than presume. It concludes as firmly as can be done by Historical Proofs; And what Mr Harrington has so confidently 
H. pag. 74.  assumed, That these Cities can not be shown to have had the Command of any Considerable Army will not serve to enervate it. Of the Jonians were eleven or twelve Cities, of the Aeolians as many, of the Dorians five, with their Territories, all united by Leagues and Confederacies; Now by granting that these had no considerable Army (which lies under a great Suspicion of Falsehood, for they had one good enough to venture the hazard of a Battle with Harpagus one of Cyrus his Lieutenant Generals) He grants the Vanity of his own Conceit, That military Virtue should be the necessary Effect of Popular Government, Or that Commonwealths have merely by Virtue of their Policy been preserved from being conquered by Monarches.  
In the Example of the Sicilian Republics which I next made use of, Mr Harrington says 
H. pag. 75.  there is not so much as a Presumption in my Favour; But either his skill or his Fidelity in point of History is so slender, that We can not rely upon his Word. The Condition of Sicily, in the Age We dispute about was not unlike that of Greece, the Seacoasts being planted with several Populous and Opulent Cities, which enjoying their Liberty, made so many distinct Commonwealths subsisting by themselves, and joined only by Leagues not durable, but transient and changing according to the Exigence of Affaires. The chief and most considerable of these was Syracuse, which knew so ill how to conserve her Liberty, that for the greatest Part she lived under the Power of Absolute Princes, Whom the Popular Grecians, than the only Masters of Appellations, taught the World to call Tyrants, though some of them are known to have been Princes of excellent Virtue and Goodness. That these were entrusted by the Syracusians themselves, and so can not be accounted to have come to their Power by Conquest I have no need to deny, For Mr Harrington errs very much if He thinks these are the Examples I at first intended; I shall only insist upon such Acquisitions as have been made by these absolute Princes of Syracuse over the Sicilian Republics, in respect of whom their Arms were Foreign, and their Successes pure Conquests. It being only a piece of Ostentation to heap together a multitude of Examples, I will neglect such as the Reigns of Gelon and the first Hiero do furnish, and fix only upon those of Dionysius the Elder. This Prince, 'tis true, did from mean beginnings climb up to a great Fortune, and at length juggled himself into the Throne; But yet his Government was signalised by many great Actions, against the Carthaginians especially who had newly begun to settle in Sicily: But that in which We are concerned, is the Advantage he obtained over some 
Diod. Sic. lib. 14.  of the Sicilian Commonwealths, three of which, Naxus, Catana, and the Leontines, He reduced in one Expedition, destroyed their Cities, and transplanted the People into other Places. A while after the Tauromenians, abandoned by the Carthaginians, did not run a much gentler Fortune. From thence let Us follow him into the Southern part of Italy, (which, though in the stile of a later Age, is Sicily too) and there We may observe him Defeating in a very great Battle, the Crotoniates with the Confoederate Forces of all the Grecian Republics in Italy, the Ruin of one of which called Caulonia, was the first consequence of his Victory. The year after, Rhegium a Commonwealth so powerful as to have a Fleet of threescore and ten Galleys at Sea, was after an obstinate Siege of eleven Months forced to surrender to Him, and those Inhabitants which survived the War and Famine, were put to their Ransom, or sold for Slaves. These are the Instances by which the Sicilian Commonwealths are truly asserted to have been conquered by the Arms of a Monarch.  
To these many other Examples out of ancient History might easily be added, but that Mr Harrington is not in a Disposition to profit by them. The several Republics conquered by Darius might be enumerated, The Cities of Cyprus and Phoenicia that were subdued by Euagoras might be inquired into, The Commonwealths in Asia (One of which that of the Sambestans brought an Army of sixty thousand Foot and six thousand Horse into the Field) that stooped to Alexander's Victorious Sword might be insisted on; But they shall be all let pass, since it is not the Number but Evidence of Arguments by which Truth is established.  
The two Modern Examples of Genova and Florence remain; Concerning the first of which Mr Harrington's Confession that She was subdued saves Me the Pains of proving the Matter of Fact: What He has to object is but this, 
H. pag. 76. and 77.  First That though she has been under, being yet standing she can not be said to be conquered, but remaineth as she was before Doria was born: And then That there is nothing plainer than that this Commonwealth was subdued by her own Sedition. But if a Commonwealth has been subdued by a Foreign Prince, has by her Magistrates sworn Fealty to Him, has received a Governor and Garrison, and has lived under this Power many years, (all which things concurred in the case of Genova) Shall she still be said not to have been conquered, Because by the Assistance and Protection of another Foreign Prince she afterward happened to recover her Liberty? We may as well maintain that because the Israelites were restored to their Country and law by the Medes and Persians, They can not be said to have been conquered by the Assyrians. Nor does Genoa remain as she did before Doria was born, as will be apparent to him that will take the Pains to examine the Histories of those times and Actions: Of doing which there is the more need because Mr Harrington (I will not give him one of his own Compliments, 
H. pag. 6.  and say he does it, as is usual with him, falsely and fraudulently) has confounded the Distinct and different Conditions of this Republic before and after the Restauration of it by Doria. To the next Point, That this Commonwealth was subdued by her own Sedition, I have no more to say, but That this Reply is fitted for all Arguments, and would serve for a Million of Instances (if so many could be produced) as well as for this, there being no vanquished State which has not in some Measure cooperated to it's own Ruin. In the mean while I know not whether I should laugh at or Pity myself, for being put to deal with a Man, who thinks his own and a Commonwealth's Credit secured by such Answers.  
The History of the Florentines and Family of Medicis is not so sincerely deduced by Mr Harrington, that We should abstain from making some remarks upon it. Though Cosimo and Laurence of Medicis had, for a Commonwealth, obtained a very extraordinary Power at Florence, And though Peter had indiscreetly stretched, it farther than the other two had done, yet was that Family far from being absolute Masters of Florence, their Power being all this while Sotto nome, & con dimostrationi quasi civili; The Signory, the Supreme Magistracy 
Guicciard. lib. 1.  of the Commonwealth continued still on foot, which upon the first Discredit that Peter's Affairs were fallen into at the approach of the French Army, had Authority enough to proclaim him Rebel, and drive him out of the City. Peter de Medicis being thus banished, Florence returned to a Popular Government, which had fair leisure to settle itself, meeting with no disturbance from the Medici ex … one little Conspiracy not well managed, whose Detection served only to confirm the Government by the Execution and Exile of Peter's best friends. But in the year 1512, and 18 years after the expulsion of the Medici, yet before Leo was Pope or Charles Emperor, (for Leo was not made Pope till after the first Restitution of his Family to Florence, and was dead before the second, So that He could not be, as Mr Harrington has represented him Author 
H. pag. 77,  of either) the Medici were restored to Florence by the Arms of the King of Arragon under the Conduct of the Viceroy of Naples: For it being perceived that there was no Possibility of withdrawing the Florentines from the Friendship of the French unless by altering the Government, the Viceroy suddenly fell with his Army into Tuscany, and having by the storming of Prato, made the Florentines despair of being able to defend themselves, the City came to an Accommodation with him; And He to secure his Master of their Affections for the Future, restored the Medtci to the Power their Family enjoyed before the year 1494, yet still with an Appearance of a Commonwealth, a Counsel of about 50 
Jovius.  Persons (some Authors make them more) being constituted in whom should reside the Power of the whole People. The succeeding Reigns of Pope Leo the tenth, and Clement the seventh, both of the Family of Medicis, conduced not a little to the Confirmation of their Power in Florence; Yet all p●●as blown up again in the year 1527, When the Florentines animated by the Sacking of Rome and Pope Clement's Imprisonment, revolted from the Medici and reestablisht their Commonwealth which continued in being until the Mysterious and unexpected Reconciliation of the Pope and Emperor; In consequence of which the Emperor having by 
Hist. deal Concil. Trident.  a difficult War, brought the Florentines to submit upon Discretion gave the Command of the City to Alexander de Medicis, and his Heirs for ever. It is now 127 years that they have continued in possession of this power, And if Mr Harrington's thoughts had not been wholly taken up on the other side the Apennine at Venice, he could not but have observed, That as the Authority of the Prince is scarce any where more absolute, so the Peace and Prosperity of the People is no where greater.  
What does he mean then to tell us, That the purse of Cosimo had done that long before 
H. p. 75.  which is here attributed to the Arms of the Pope and Emperor? To state the matter with the greatest advantage to him, We will imagine that those sums which Machiavelli says the Considerable Men of Florence had received from Cosimo, were still unpaid and might be demanded by his Heirs; But this would have made it the Interest of all those particular Men to maintain the Commonwealth, and keep out the Medici, because by that Course they would also have avoided the payment of their own Debts: And in Effect, When after the Death of Cosimo, his son Peter did by the advice of 
Machiav. ● Hist. lib. 7.  Dietisalvi Neroni call in those sums his Father had freely lent, It excited such a Tempest in Florence as came within a little of sinking him and his whole Family. The money that was borrowed of Cosimo having been thus repaid to his son Peter it must needs be impertinent to attribute to the purse of Cosimo such good Fortune as befell his Posterity fifty years after his Death, before which time the Riches he left behind him were so much dissipated, that 
Hist. lib. 8.  Machiavelli assures us, the Commonwealth was feign to affist his Grandchild Laurence of Medici with a great sum of Mony. I do not see how it can be avoided, but we must believe the Purse of Cosimo had besides the money, an old Charm in it, which made the Florentines let fall their Arms, and suffer the Medici to reassume the Government: Without doubt there is somewhat of Witchcraft in it, For if the Purse had wrought it by any natural virtue, It had been much more easy to have kept the Medici in their possession, then to restore them when they were fallen from it.  
But is it not still more strange that Florence 
Guicc. lib. 2.  should not deserve the name of a Commonwealth? Had she not her private Counsels debating, her Great Council resolving, and her Magistrates Executing? Was not the Rotation too provided for by the Annual Election of her Gonfalionere? All these things which sound so big in Westminster Hall, in Florence are not to be counted such Orders as deserve the name of a Commonwealth. Truly it is not generously done of Mr Harrington thus to add to the Afflictions of a poor unfortunate Lady Republic. But to what purpose do we dispute any longer? If Genova be shown to have been conquered by a Monarch, We are told She was subdued by her own Seditions; If Florence has run the same Fortune, she had never attained such Orders as deserve the name of a Commonwealth. What pity is it that a worthy Patriot should be forced to take Sanctuary in a Mousehole? In this posture I confess I know not how to come at him, but must leave him as a fit employment for the formidable 
H. in Epist.  Rat-catcher of his own Erection.  
After so liberal a taste of Mr Harrington's ingenuity in reference to these examples both Ancient and Modern, I am never to be persuaded He means Good Faith when he calls for Reason and Experience to decide the Question 
H. p7. 77  about the Fate of Empires. In Humane Actions the Dependence of Effects upon their Causes is so obscure, That the wisest Historians do but make conjectures when they endeavour to penetrate into them; Nor can any Discourse of that Nature be so convincing from which so great a Master of Cavils as Mr Harrington may not find an Evasion. Yet if I were to convince any Rational uninterested Person, That the Fate of Empires has not born a proportion to the Perfection of their Government, I need only put him in mind that the Chinese and Persians did for perfection of Government very far excel the rude Tartarians, by whom they have been more than once conquered; That the Greek Emperors had a better Policy than the wild Arabians, to whom they lost so great a part of their Dominions; That the very Roman Empire can not be thought to have been at such a decay of Policy and Government, but that it was still at a better pass than the Barbarous Nations by whom it was rend in pieces; For by that time it was pretty well cured of its worst Malady, the Insolence of the Soldiers, who were grown less dangerous after the Empire came to be in a manner Hereditary.  
But He proceeds to tell us, That the Arms of 
ibid.  Israel were always victorious till the death of Josua, whereupon the Orders of that Commonwealth being neglected, they came afterwards to be seldom prosperous. Had it not first been fit (seeing the state under Josua, Be it what it will from the first to the last was but of ten years) He should have torn the History of David's forty years successful Reign out of his Bible? The Arms of Rome during the popular Government were at such a pitch as if Victory had known no other Wings but those of her Eagles. How then came it about that Augustus and Trajan brought the Parthians to Reason, who had destroyed Crassus and the Commonwealth's Army? Alexander with an 
H. p. 80.  handful of freer men overcame the hugest Army, the most vast and populous Empire in the world. But with what did he overcome the Thebans who were freer men than his? Or why was He not overcome by those several thousands of freer Grecians who under Memon the Rhodian & Choeredemus served Darius? I wonder that a man should take such pains to be ridiculous, and should not rather apprehend this easy distinction, That though success belongs to valour and Military discipline, Valour and Military Discipinle belong not to one form of Government or Policy, but are attainable in any,  
What he observes out of Sir Francis Bacon about the French and English, comes to little more than this, that the one affecting to fight on horseback and the other on foot, the French have had a good Cavalry, and the English, a good Infantry; Though that too be now almost out of Date, for at present the English fight well enough on horseback and in French on foot. The successes of the English in France were never durable enough to have any thing of this Nature inferred from them; And we may observe they always followed the Person of the Prince: With us Edward the third, and Henry the fifth wise & valiant Princes gaining, Richard the second and Henry the sixth weak Princes losing; With them John and Charles the sixth Men of no Ability losing, Charles the fift and Charles the seventh Brave Princes recovering. Nor does Mr Harrington now stand in need of being taught that during the Wars between the English and French, France was scarce half what she is now, We then always finding a Duke of Britain or Burgundy to take our part.  
In one point Mr Harrington has dealt very 
H. p. 97.  discretly, when putting off the Robe of Legislator, He takes to him the Mantle of Prophet, and with as little remorse as an Almanac-maker when he plays the interpreter to a Comet, predicts what shall befall Europe: For this not belonging to the present Age, will not be to be confuted bunt by our Great-grandchildrens. Yet I am not ware of any Reason he can have to enter into so Tragical an Humour for if he be offended that the Wars of Europe are of no more Dispatch, Paruta's Discourses would have furnished him with several Reasons for it, of which this is one, That Europe being parceled out into several States, all Armed and watchful over their own and their Neighbour's Interest, the growth of any one State is presently balanced by a League of some of the other; At which work the Ministers of state are every where become so expert, that to keep Europe equally poised, is little more with them then to trim a London Wherry. If I were disposed to take my turn of Prediction, I might let Mr Harrington know that when by the Accession of some Marriage, or any great unthought of Revolution, the Houses of France and Austria cease to be a drawn Match, then will he see those great changes in Europe, which before it will be but in vain to expect. In the mean while he ought not to impute this to any Defect of Policy either in Germany or Europe, more than of old in Greece, when being Cantoned into a multitude of Republics she did from the Peloponesiac War to the Reign of Alexander fight so long time to so little Purpose.  
For Ragusa and San Marino, Mr Harrington takes them by the wrong handle; They were not by Me made use of to show that a Commonwealth has been conquered by the Arms of a Monarch, but only to prove that the Success of Arms has no necessary Dependence upon Perfection of Government, Seeing these Commonwealths have a good Government, yet never were successful in Arms. Which part of the Argument is by Mr Harrington left untouched and in full Force.  
There has been enough said to evince the Falsehood of Mr Harrington's first Assertion, That a Commonwealth was never Conquered by any Monarch from the beginning of the World to this Day; In discussing which, Occasion has been also given to manifest the Vanity of another of his Conceptions, That the Success of Arms depends upon the Perfection of the Government or Policy. His second Assertion was, That a Commonwealth was the Government, which hath frequently led mighty Monarches in Triumph. This the Considerer replied was to run upon the Foil, it being only the Conversion of the First: Upon this Mr Harrington Triumphs too as well as his Commonwealth, and would have it thought that the Considerer took this for a Logical Conversion of the Terms. But where 
H. pag. 80.  did the Considerer reveal this to Him? If Mr Harrington had not been at such Enmity with Mathematics and Mathematicians, He might have learned there is a Conversion of Proportion, or of the Consequence of things; And that this is not such an one He will never be able to show till he has made new Laws of Ratiocination as well as of Government.  
If any Man should chance to wonder how Mr Harrington's last Paragraph comes to belong to this Chapter, He is to be advertised that the Coherence is both Elegant and Natural, And consists in this, Burning the fingers, and Blistering the tongue, Blistering, You know, uses to follow Burning. This Blister forsooth, is raised upon the Considerers tongue for having entitled Mr Harrington to this Assertion, That the Senate of Venice at the first institution took in the whole People, Whereas he affirmed it not of the Senate but Commonwealth of Venice. But in doing this I wronged myself more than Mr Harrington, it being neither my intention nor concernment to disprove that Assertion to be true of the Senate, but of the Grand Counsel in which consists the Commonwealth. Now that tha Grand Counsel or Commonwealth did not, 
H. p. 81.  even at the first institution, take in the whole People of Venice, will appear to be more than Perhaps. Gianotti does by very many and those concluding Arguments make it out, That the first Institution of the Grand Counsel was in the Reign of Sebastian Ciani, which began Anno 1175, And the bringing of it to Perfection in Gradenigo's time who entered upon the Government Anno 1297. This Council never consisted of more than 4500 Persons, And that these should be the whole People is repugnant to all Histories of the Increase and Power of the Commonwealth at that time. Giannotti also says plainly, That it took in only such of the People as were considerable for Estate and Quality. Nor is it material that Machiavelli whom Mr Harrington follows is of the contrary opinion, for his Discourse carries its own Refutation along with it, in as much as He supposes the Grand Counsel or distinction of Gentlemen and People to have been made at the very 
Mach. Disc. lib. 1. cap. 6.  Institution of the Commonwealth, whereas Giannotti has proved it to be of a later Original by many hundred years. A great part of the People being then excluded from the Government, which in respect of them was unequal, The inquiry was how these were kept in Obedience, of which an account was given out of Contarini. This account Mr Harrington cannot accuse of any thing but an improper speech (for the intention plainly looks another way) whilst I attributed that to the Senate which belongs to the whole Commonwealth; For which also He saves Me the pains of making any Apology, since He confesses it to be a way of Locution made use of by very good Authors.   

CHAP. XI.  
Whether there be an Agrarian, or some Law, or Laws of that Nature to supply the Defect of it in every Commonwealth: And whether the Agrarian as it is stated in Oceana, be equal and satisfactory to all Interests.  
BEcause it concerned Mr Harrington to show his utmost Activity in this Chapter, That the Reader might take the less notice of the Slights and Tricks that were to be put upon him, he first of all confounds the state of the Question, by complicating several distinct Particulars; These I have untwisted & they resolve themselves into three Questions, Of the Agrarian in every Commonwealth, Of the Laws supplying the Defect of it, Of the Agrarian as it is stated in Oceana. To each of which separately.  
I do not intent to be so far carried out of the way by keeping Mr Harrington Company, as in this place once more to repeat the Doctrine of the Balance; It will be enough to reflect how in that Chapter it has been proved, First That Riches do put in part, & that dependantly upon the Sovereign Power which constitutes Propriety, conduce to Empire; And secondly, That so far as Riches do conduce to Empire, it is to be understood indifferently of all sorts of Riches and not to be restrained to Propriety or the Balance in Land unless in such places where there is no considerable Wealth but what arises immediately from the Revenue or Cultivation of Land. This I might justly plead as a Privilege to exempt Me from handling this Chapter, seeing Mr Harrington's Propositions about an Agrarian are no otherwise Material, then upon a supposition that his Doctrine of the Balance remains firm and unconfuted.  
Yet not to refuse any leap Mr Harrington sets Me, I will in the first place examine Aristotle's opinion of the Balance, whom Mr Harrington does here pretend to bring to his side by helping the Translation a little. And that the Gentleman has indeed been a Translator of Poets is not unknown, but that he should in translating a Philosopher in Prose use a Liberty more than Poetical seems not very allowable. He will have the words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 rendered 
H. p. 85  by the Words Political Balance, understood as He has stated the thing. Let him then produce one Interpreter of Aristotle or one Lexicographer who is of his mind, and I will yield my share in the Question; Nay let him show how it is possible this should be Aristotle's meaning, when He has directly condemned, not without Derision, Phaleas the Chalcedonian for having introduced the Balance and 
Arist. Polit. lib. 2. c. 7  Agrarian into his Commonwealth. If He can do neither of these, He must give Me leave to tell Him, that He offers an Intolerable violence to the Text and Sense of Aristotle. This he does as often as he citys Aristotle in this Chapter, but let one Instance serve for all. Inequality is the source of all sedition, as when the Riches of one or a few come to cause such overbalance as draws the Commonwealth into Monarchy or Oligarchy; For preventing of which the Ostracism hath been of use in divers Places as at Argos and Athens, The words of Aristotle run thus; 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 (the Verb 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or the like must be understood) 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Here he renders 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, by Riches that came to cause an overbalance, though nothing can be more manifest than that Aristotle in this place is not to be understood of Riches only but of Interest, Reputation, Command, and all other things which may any way contribute to supreme Power. This will be put past all Contradiction if we observe that Aristotle in this place speaking of a Disease in a Commonwealth, gives an account also of the Cure, For by the Method of the Cure the Disease may be certainly known: And for this excess of power, this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that was greater than suited with the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the Commonwealth, We are told that at Athens the Ostracism was prescribed. Now the Ostracism both by the Institution and Practice of it is known not to have been leveled at the Riches of men only, but at any extraordinary Power, Credit, or Interest they had acquired in the Commonwealth; Aristides was banished by the Ostracism for having rendered himself Popular by his equity in arbitrating Law suits, And when he died He was so poor that the City was fain to be at the Charges of his Funeral, and to give his Daughter's Portions. Again, How could the Ostracism be a preservative against the Overbalance in Riches, when notwithstanding the Ostracism a man retained the possession of his whole Estate? It is therefore evident to be against all Reason that Mr Harrington should render the words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by the 
H. p. 8●  words Political Balance, understood as He has stated the thing; And his own Dilemma recoils upon him, For He will not have the more of Authority in this point of the Balance, since Aristotle knew of it only to disapprove it, Nor yet the less of Competition in it, because it was so long since stumbled upon by Phaleas the Chalcedonian.  
Having thus traduced Aristotle, in the next 
ibid.  place he does as much for the Considerer, whom he accuses for throwing only at Israel Lacedaemon and Oceana, when he had set him all the Commonwealths in the World. But is it fair play to say He set Me that which while now He kept in his sleeve? Are there in Oceana any examples of Commonwealths proposed that are pretended to be equal in their Agrarian, except Israel and Lacedaemon? Is it not expressly said by him that Athens and Rome were unequal as to their Agrarian, that of Athens being infirm, that of Rome none 
Ocena. p. 26.  at all? For those new examples of Venice, Germany, etc. which Mr Harrington does at present pretend to set Me, I may with great Reason refuse to throw at them, as being false money; Not one of them amounting to an example of an Agrarian, but at most of such Laws as have been instituted to supply the Defect of one.  
I pass on then to make good what has in the Considerations been objected against the Agrarian of Israel taken in Mr Harrington's sense; And that is reducible to these Heads. 1. That the Division of the Land of Canaan was not a Politic Institution intended as the Basis of the Government, but was an Effect of Gods Promise to Abraham, that He would give that Land to his seed after him; 2. That this is manifested by the Law of the Jubilee, which otherways had been a weak provision, near fifty year's time being by that afforded for any man to multiply his Lot to that Height as would necessarily have subverted the Government; 3. That the Government of Israel had subsisted forty five years without the pretended Agrarian; 4. And finally, That in the Division the Lots must needs have been very unequal, it being else impossible there should on the one side have been hereditary Princes of the Tribes, and on the otherside men so extremely poor as to sell themselves for slaves.  
The first of these propositions he plays with very wantonly, and asks, If the Right of an 
H. p. 87.  Oceaner unto his Land must derive from the Promise of God unto Abraham? Now to ask him again, Who says so? Is no toying, but very good earnest. And Mr Harrington, if he had intended to deal fairly, might perceive He was bound to show, That the like division of the Lands in Oceana is necessary notwithstanding there be no such cause, as was the promise of God unto Abraham upon which the Division of Canaan inseparably depended. But he continues his gay Humour, and (as Tumblers divert the Company with an Hoop) frisks about this Circle, He proposes the Division of the Lands in Israel as an equal Agrarian on which their Popular Government was founded; He is told by Me, That this division of the Land 
Gceanap. 26.  looked not at the Government, but followed the promise of God unto Abraham, And that there is not any Footstep of the other Design in the whole Bible. He replies, That God in ordaining the Balance of Israel having ordained the Cause, ordained also the Effect which was Popular Government. Thus supposing at all adventures that Government to be Popular, he will have the Agrarian (that he Fancies) to be the Cause & Foundation of it, And at the next step to show that this Agrarian is the Cause, He supposes Popular Government to be the Effect. What can any Reasonable man desire more of a new Beginner? But he must pardon Me, I am still upon the same Ground; He must by some express place of Scripture (for that place Num. 26. 53. going no farther than Tribes or at most than Families falls short of doing it as I have showed Consid. pag. 57) prove, That the division of the Lands by Lot was intended for the foundation of the Government, Or He must not think by such weak and precary Diductions from his own Notion of a Balance to perswade us that God had any such Design in it.  
What he answers about the Jubilee is mere Cavilling; For it belongs not to Me to show how in fifty years one Lot might be so increased as to subvert the Government, but to him to show that the possibility of this was prevented by the Agrarian Law contained in the Jubilee. Yet a man may without giving occasion to be 
H. p. 86.  accused of boasting, own Mathematics enough to demonstrate how if not one, yet a few men (which as to to the present subject creates no Difference) might come to be owners of the whole Land of Canaan in the time between two Jubiles. For the Israelites being not where forbidden Merchandise, let it be supposed that some few of them addicted themselves to Traffic, and by the success of it annually improved their estates twenty in the hundred, which a 'mong Merchants is not reputed an immoderate gain. The increase of 20 per Cent. in 50 years which is the distance of two Jubiles, multiplies an estate 7676 times, as will be manifest if in a Geometrical Progression of 50 Terms, according to the proportion of 100 to 120, or 5 to 6 the last Term be found out. Now the whole Number of Lots in the Land of Canaan was 600000, which being divided by 7676 gives Us 78 for the Number of Men who might in the time between two Jubiles acquire the Propriety of the whole Land. But it is enough to 
H. p. 12.  possess three Parts in four to cause an overbalance, Wherefore Sixty Men might notwithstanding the Jubilee come to overbalance the rest of Israel and by that overthrow the Popular Government; By which it appears that the Jubilee could not be intended for an Agrarian Law, to lie at the Foundation of the Government.  
Nor is his Exception against the Argument drawn from that space of 45 years during which the Government of Israel subsisted without this pretended Agrarian, fraught with any honester meaning: It is not to be doubted, that the Israelites received many Laws in the Wilderness that were not to be put in Execution, till after their Settlement in the Land of Canaan, Of which that was one, Judges and Officers shalt thou make thee in all thy Gates. But He has taught Us to put a Difference between 
H. p. 88  the Foundation and the Superstructures: Therefore though the Government of Israel subsisted well enough in the Wilderness without an Order that depended totally upon their local Distribution in the Land of Canaan, This is no Argument that it might do so without an Order which is represented as Necessary and Fundamental to the Government. Before they had Gates, They neither could have nor needed Judges in them, but that does not make the Wonder cease how their Government could subsist 45 years without an Agrarian, if that must be reputed the Basis of their Commonwealth. And whereas Mr Harrington says, The Israelites under Moses were an Army, What is that to purpose unless this Army must be thought to have been governed by Him by Martial Law? Which can never be affirmed by Mr Harrington, who has made their Government bear 
Ocean. p. 16.  Date, and exemplified in some of the most important Orders of it, so many years before.  
But all the Considerer's Faults have been hitherto but Peccadillos', He is now accused of no less than taking part with the Devil, and that 
H. pag. 90.  for having said He was not ware of any Prerogative of Authority belonging to the Israelitish more than any other Republic, If any Man will take the Pains to look upon that Passage of the Considerations pag. 39 He will find two Advantages of Authority expressly there set down by Me, which the Jewish had above all other Commonwealths; If there be any more, Mr Harrington would have done Honestly to inform Us; But not having been able to do that, and yet to charge Me with the quite contrary of what I asserted, will leave it out of Dispute which of Us takes part with the Devil, who We know, was a Liar from the Beginning.  
For as to his Distinction of the Power and Authority of a Commonwealth, it is in itself Insignificant, and as to this Place and Purpose, Impertinent; The whole Authority of the Jewish Republic is included in those two Points by Me explained in the Considerations. And what if the Romans being resolved to erect a Popular Government, to save themselves the pains of contriving, were content to borrow their Twelve Tables of the Athenians? Must We therefore be enforced to have recourse to the Jews, though We neither have Need of nor Room for any of their Particular Constitutions? This may give just cause to suspect his Design is to introduce the Judaical Law, And that there is nothing to choose between James Harrington Legislator, and William Medley Scribe. Concerning the Jewish Agrarian then, it is enough that Mr Harrington's Replies to the Considerer's Objections are thus manifested to be unsatisfactory.  
All that is alleged in Opposition to the Considerer's Apprehensions of the Lacedaemonian Agrarian is so Insignificant, that I can have Nothing to reply; For of Nothing is produced Nothing. I will therefore make use of this Leisure Mr Harrington affords Me, to make out a little more fully, from the History of Lacedaemon my former Assertions about the Agrarian of that Republic.  
Lycurgus when he had begun to new Model the Commonwealth, finding the greater part of the People to be desperately Poor, and some few very Rich, out of a Design to banish on the one side Envy and Insidiation, on the other Insolence and Luxury, and together with these, Riches and Poverty, the Mother Diseases of a Commonwealth, He persuaded them to come to a New and equal Division of Lands; And that for the future they should live upon equal Terms with one another, not aiming at Priority in any thing but Merit, and reputing there aught to be no difference between Man and Man, but what arises from the Praise of Virtue and Reproach of Vice. After He had accomplished this, They say that passing through 
ibid.  the Country in Harvest, and seeing the Shocks of Corn all of a size, He smiled and said the Country looked as if it belonged to Brothers who had newly parted their Inheritance. In setting out these Lots He seems to have looked only at fitting the People, by a bare and necessitous Life, for the Trade of War; without that He might have made their Lots as large again, having Territory enough (〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉) 
Plut. in Solon.  for twice as many People, the surplusage of which, perhaps, lay waist, or was enjoyed by their Slaves. Nor was it lawful for any Spartan to improve this Lot to the best, by living upon it, for they were strictly prohibited all Occupations, even that of Agriculture, and their Hinds or Helots' paid 
Plut. in Lyc.  them only an Annual Quantity of Corn, Wine and other Fruits. This Institution had served to little purpose, if it had been free for the Lacedæmonians to possess what Personal Estates they thought fit, and therefore Lycurgus (having failed in attempting a like Division in Movables) first forbidden the Use of Gold and Silver, and then by the extreme debasing of their other Coin, cut off all possibility of Traffic with their Neighbours; So that No Man of any Art or Trade tending to Elegancy, Vanity, or Luxury could have any hopes of gaining a Livelihood at Sparta: And withal such Offences as are every where committed out of Desire of money, did of themselves soon cease, Money itself being become of so little worth. In all other Points also the Institution of the Lacedæmonians was very severe, and serving merely to accustom them during Peace to the Incommodities of War. Therefore the Raillery of that Italian was sharp enough, who said 
Plut. in Pelop.  the Lacedæmonians did not great matter in being so daring in the Wars, if it were only to free themselves of a laborious and miserable Life.  
Though these things had been with so much Care provided for by Lycurgus, his Laws were exposed to the same Fate with those of all other Legislators, and wanted a Power to make themselves be observed. It was very early, in Croesus' time, that the Lacedæmonians began to cast amorous Glances upon Gold, for being corrupted by him, they connived at the 
Paus. Messen  Slavery he brought upon the Grecian Republics in Asia. Their Agrarian also, so far was it from being the  Basis of the Commonwealth, was soon confounded as well as those of the Argives and Messenians, and that, as Aristotle intimates, by the defect of Lycurgus his own Laws; For though 
Polit. lib. 2. cap. 9  he forbade Men to alienate their Lots by sale, He left it free for them to give and bequeath what they thought fit. So that 
Arist. P ol lib. 5. c. 7.  during the Messeniac War, a sedition was raised of them who demanded a new Division of the Lands. I know that is generally held these innovations were of a much later Date, & Plutarch names Epitadeus one of the Ephores as author of them, But the obligation is Mr 
Plut. in Agid.  Harrington's not mine, to reconcile these Authors. However it is manifest, that this Breach in their Laws was soon taken, for they preserved themselves in the Integrity of their Manners and Institution, till after the taking of Athens by Lysander. But the Booty gained in that War being very great, Lysander prevailed, that the Gold and Silver might be brought to Sparta for the erecting a Public Treasury, without which it would be impossible to carry on the Design of making themselves the Captains and Leaders of all Greece. This was with some reluctancy consented to, yet not without this previous Caution, That the money should serve only for Public Uses, and that it should be Death for any private man to have Gold or Silver in his house, which Law was put in Execution upon the person of Thorax, But it was in vain to forbid 
Plut. in Lysand.  that in Private, which was allowed in Public; For with the possession of money immediately entered Covetousness; & after that an inclination to Ease and Luxury, which presenly overthrew the sober and masculine temper of their Commonwealth. Instead of that Probity toward their Friends and Neighbours which accompanied their Poverty, now Pride, Insolence and Avarice took Place. So that becoming weak & Effeminate at home, & Odious abroad, their Commonwealth soon fell from all its Virtue and Glory. And this shown the Providence of Lycurgus who knowing that the equality of their scant Lots was not a sufficient. Bar to the mischiefs produced by Riches, had at the beginning condemned the use of Gold and Silver; for these miseries befell the State a good while before they grew so expert at breaking of Laws as to violate their Agrarian. At length that went after the Rest, and the Commonwealth being totally abandoned to Luxury and Corruption (having first made a weak attempt or two to revert to her ancient Discipline) came to utter Ruin.  
Thus have I given you a Crayon of the Commonwealth of Lacedaemon in reference to her Agrarian; Which appears to have been instituted by Lycurgus: only as a necessary Provision for attaining that Poverty and Virility, which he intended to incorporate with his Commonwealth. Against this Mr Harrington will scarce have any more to object than he has done already, which is in effect just Nothing. He brings indeed Aristotle and Plutarch to a false Muster, but Aristotle has been already rescued from his Abuses, and the Place of Plutarch is the same (excepting only his want of sincerity in citing it) with that I first produced in this Discourse.  
I am now delivered from this first Question of the Agrarian, and, according to the Method I proposed, the second Question which belongs to Such Laws as supply the Defect of an Agrarian in several Commonwealth's, comes to be discussed; In doing which I shall not have occasion to spend much Time.  
The first Instance Mr Harrington gives, is of 
H. pag. 86.  the Ostracism which supplied the Defect in the Grecian Cities of an Agrarian. That the Ostracism was not inflicted upon Men for their excessive Riches, so much as for diminishing the Power and Credit which by their Virtue and Great Actions They had attained to in the Commonwealth, I have already made appear; And by Consequence Mr Harrington's Fancy that it supplied the Defect of an Agrarian taken in his Sense must needs be without Ground. To which it will only be needful to add, that when the Athenians thought of putting Nicias to the Ostracism, (than the Richest Subject of Greece, and most obnoxious to a Law that studied to prevent excess of Wealth) their Motives were, His reserved, stately, and unpopular Manner of Life, together with his Firmness in adhering to the Public Good, and opposing the rash Desires of the People: And though his Riches also are mentioned by Plutarch among the rest, yet so as that they were the Object of their Envy rather than their Fear. I wonder why Mr Harrington, who goes off Fist after every Fly, did not mention the Petalism of Syracuse as well as the Ostracism of Athens in imitation of which it was invented: But it is to be presumed he abstained from it because of the Success, which discovered how pernicious this Device was to the Public. For upon the Institution of this Law, the Syracusans of better Quality (a People, it seems, not of so unquiet and enterprizing a Temper as the Athenians) who by their Wisdom and Experience were capacitated to have served the Commonwealth, retired themselves from all Public Affairs, thereby to avoid the danger of Banishment. And so the Care of the Public being abandoned to the most indigent and Impudent Persons, who took 
Diod. Sic. lib. 11.  care of nothing but how to slatter the People in their Orations, the Commonwealth was plunged into so many Disorders and Seditions, that there was no hopes of her Recovery, unless by repealing the Petalism, to invite Men of worth to resume the Conduct of Affairs.  
For what concerns the Agrarian of Rome, Mr Harrington has long since said it was none at 
Ocean. p. 26.  all, and in effect says now the same; For if They did but strive for it, it is evident they never obtained it.  
That at Venice the Officers of the Pomp should supply the Defect of an Agrarian, will scarce be believed by him, who knows how slightly the Accurate Giannotti passes over the Description of that Office. I think also it will not be easy to comprehend how a Law that preserves the Nobility from laying themselves out upon vain and Gaudy. Apparencies should tend to the limiting their Estates. But, he says, a Venetian that 
H. pag 86.  should keep a Table or have his house furnished with Retainers would be obnoxious. Does any Italian affect that expensive way of Popularity? Or how should a Noble Venetian need to do it, when he may notwithstanding entertain in Pension eight or ten Bravoes?  
Fellow him to the Germane Republics, and You will find they have no more to supply the Defect of this Law, than that Estates descending are divided among the Children: And grant this in Oceana, and You grant the whole Agrarian. By these Republics sure We are not to understand Nuremberg, Strasburg, etc. but the Princely houses of Austria, Saxony, the Rhine, etc. all which maintain this Custom: But these are all Monarchies by a Nobility, or at least Members of that Great one the Empire. Wherefore Mr Harrington commits a great Error in his Apprehension of the Germane Agrarian, or has incurred a far greater one in his Model of a Commonwealth, in proposing that Agrarian as fit for an equal Commonwealth, which by his own Confession belongs to a Monarchy by Nobility.  
And this brings Me to the third Question, concerning the Agrarian as it is stated in Oceana; Which as it has no community with that of Israel in the original of its institution, so has it very little Resemblance with that of Lacedaemon in the aim and Method of its Establishment. This was acknowledged long since by the Considerer, and Mr Harrington could not but see it, though He makes so pitiful an Endeavour to mistake my Meaning. But I am at a Loss; The Dialect of the next Pages makes Me think I am fallen into the Company of Cheats, And that it is not Aristotle or Plutarch that can now bring Me off, but that the late Act of Parliament against Gaming must do it. This is at least made evident by it, That Mr Harrington is conversant in the Mysteries of other Boxes besides Ballotting Ones, and is no less Qualified for Secretary to the Comb-makers Ordinary, then to a Commonwealth. I envy not his high endowments, but I must soberly let him know, that though, while he maintains the Dignity of a Philosopher, and a Gentleman, I count myself obliged to return him a Serious Answer, When he thinks fit to play the Buffoon, I can laugh as unconcernedly as any other Man. And to Laughter only (my Pity excepted) am I disposed by seeing how he disports himself in shaking the 15 false Dice he pretends to find in one of my Throws: Gentlemen, (for it is necessary I should appeal to the Looker's on) the Dice I threw were all true, for which he has in taking them up, set down these False Ones; Not any one of those 15 Absurdities belongs to Me, but are all framed by himself, either by a willing Mistake of my meaning, or by a childish Distortion of my Words. My first Argument therefore, That his Model of an Agrarian is unjust, remains unconfuted, and is not ever to be answered by any Man who, like Mr Harrington, makes Propriety the Ground 
H. p. 93.  of Government. He ventures indeed to say, that his Agrarian does not alter Propriety, but only obliges a great landed Man to divide it among his Children: But he ought to have remembered that the Liberty of disposing as a Man thinks fit of his own, is Essential to the Propriety We now Dispute of; And if it be the Piety of dividing the land among all the Children he is taken with, his Hypocrisy may be a little suspected, in regard he has made this Law only to concern the Surplusage of 2000l. p. an.  
The second Argument which in the Considerations I made use of against the Agrarian of Oceana was this, That the Rate of 2000 l. p. an. at which it is stated can never be fixed, but that it will continually be in danger of being still brought lower, till at length it be so far debased, That the keeping it from going any lower will be the Concernment of a greater Number of Men, than They make up who have an Interest in the further debasing of it. This Argument Mr Harrington has thought sit to anticipate, by pretending to answer it in his eight Chapter. I must therefore go back to that Place, which I find to be not only dislocated, but so strangely shattered, that it will be very hard for Me to Splinter up the broken confused Pieces of it. But to make as much of his Answer as I can, He seems to say in the first Place, That the People are naturally incapable 
H. p. 44.  of such a Design as Levelling or reducing the Standard of Estates to the lowest Rate, seeing never any People (except a faint Attempt of the Romans) went about it; And if there be any such thing familiar with the Nature of the People, why appeared it but once, and vanished without Effect? This Method of arguing à non esse ad non posse, or affirming because a Thing has not yet been it can never be, is peculiar to Mr Harrington; But there is some reason to doubt, other men will not look upon this as sufficient Security, especially if They consider how the People are now taught Principles before unknown to them, That the Balance of Dominion in Land is the Natural Cause of Empire, And That the Balance ought to be fixed by an Agrarian Law. For in Oceana every Man (who is not a Servant) above 18 years of age being obliged to have Arms, and every Man above 30 being capable of Magistracy, the People finding the Empire in their own hands, must of necessity conclude the Balance ought to be there too, and consequently must endeavour to take down the standard of the Agrarian so low as that the Land may come to be divided among the whole Body of the People. And if the People in other Governments, for Example under the late Monarchy, did never 
H. pag. 44.  so much as think of Levelling the Nobility, It was partly because They did not then apprehend it, as They will do now, to be a thing just and necessary; And partly because They wanted Power to do it, their Arms depending upon the Nobility, And their Vote in the Commons house being insignificant without the Consent of the King and Lords. But in the Commonwealth of Oceana the People can not want Power and Interest to effect it, either by the way of Arms or Vote: By the way of Arms, the People amounting to 200000 armed Men, with Commanders and Officers chosen by themselves out of their own Body, and having a certain Rendezvous appointed in reference to their Musters, need but declare their Resolution to have the Agrarian taken down to a less Rate than 2000l. p. an. And the whole Business is dispatched. For They who can have an Interest to keep it up at that Rate, not being above 5000 Men, can not possibly resist so much a greater Multitude, that is already armed and form into a Body. So that the People of Oceana ought not to be deterred from this Attempt by the Fear of a Civil War, and the Loss they may sustain by it, (Though, by the way, If that Reflection were enough to keep the People Q●uet, there would be little need ever to fear their stirring) seeing the 5000 Men can not do otherwise then immediately submit, as being apparently too weak to maintain themselves in the State of War. But if the People of Oceana choose rather to manage this Design by the way of Vote, They may with more ease effect it; For the Elders or Men capable of Magistracy in Oceana, being 100000 in number, And they who possess 2000l. p. an. being but 5000 in number, The same Proportion, according to an equal Calculation, must hold in the Deputies at the Prerogative Tribe; Wherefore in the Representative or Prerogative Tribe there will be twenty for one who will have an Interest to Vote the Agrarian down to a lower Standard. Yet I do not think that this will come to absolute Levelling, or giving to every Man (as Mr Harrington computes it) ten pounds 
H. pag. 45.  a year; But I do not see how it is possible it should stay sooner than at about 200 pounds a year; But that being made the measure of the Agrarian, or the greatest Estate which any man can possess in Land, there can not be less than 50000 Persons concerned to keep it from going lower, which number will, it is likely, prove considerable enough to fix it at that Rate.  
In his Answer to my third Argument, He takes Pleasure in straying out of a plain Way, and will understand Me as if I had said, The old Jews during their being Inhabitants of Canaan were great Traders. I am not ware that any Ambiguity in my Words could give him an Occasion of this Thought; But howsoever, I am content to explain myself better by declaring that I meant this of the Modern Jews, who though dispossessed of Canaan, are every where so Rich, that unless perhaps in Solomon's time, their Ancestors could never have compared Estates with them. And as They having no Land are all Merchants, so in Oceana the Possession of Land being limited, Men who aimed at farther Riches or Power, would convert their stock into Traffic, by which Emporium would be increased beyond the Proportion consisting with the Security of the Commonwealth. These were the Considerer's thoughts, which Mr Harrington seems not to disallow of, but only in the last particular, that the greatness of Emporium can prove dangerous to the Commonwealth of Oceana. To make this Probable, I must begin a Good way off. Of Commonwealths both Ancient and Modern, some have been founded upon one Great City, in which are Resident not only the Magistrates and Senate, but also the whole Body of the People which constitues the Commonwealth; Such were of old, Athens, Syracuse, Carthage, Rome, at present Venice and Genoa. These Cities are both the Heart and Head of their several Commonwealths, In them the Principal Actions of Life are performed, and from thence Blood and Spirits are conveyed into all the Parts: Their Increase is the Augmentation of the whole, and as long as they continue in Health, the Republic can not die. Hereupon have all wise Legislators contrived and encouraged the Increase of these Cities both in Population and Riches, for the whole Commonwealth being in a manner comprehended within their Walls, their enlargement can never cause any inequality or Danger to the Public. If it be 
Ocean. p. 147 H. p. 98.  thought that I commit an Error in placing Rome in this Classis of Commonwealths, seeing her Rustic Tribes were the most considerable both for number and Reputation. My inducements to it were, First that at the Institution of the Rustic Tribes they were so near adjacent to the City, that there was scarce any difference, as to the facility of Assembling together, between them and the Inhabitants of the City itself; And then secondly, That before Rome had attained any considerable Greatness, the Tribes were no longer to be taken in a Local acception but only as so many divisions of the People, to some one of which every Citizen wheresoever inhabiting must necessarily relate; As with us every freeman of London must be of some one of the old Companies. And it was in this sense that the Patricians chose to be of some Rustic Tribe, which is no more than that my Lord Major is a Skinner or a Merchant Taylor. But thirdly though Rome had her Rustic Tribes, and Athens her 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Populations in the Country, none of these had Right to assemble within their own precincts, for choosing Magistrates or nominating Deputies to represent them, nor had any capacity of dealing in Public Affairs, unless They in person repaired to the Capital City, so that this City still remained the Seat of the Commonwealth, all Public Business being transacted within her Walls.  
Other Commonwealths have not been raised upon the greatness of one City, but have consisted of the Confederacy or League of many, of which sort so many examples occur among the Grecians it is needless to name any; Of Modern ones the Union of the Netherlandish Provinces is of this Nature. And in this case no one City can acquire an extraordinary Greatness without danger to the Liberties of all the rest, or at least of Dissolution to the Union: Thus the City of Thebes being grown Powerful, took away the Liberty of the Boeotians their Confederates: And thus the Elians being enriched by the Conflux of People to the Olympian Games, encroached upon the Privileges of the Neighbouring Towns. That Amstredam of late years hugely advanced by Traffic, is in a Condition to do as much for the United States; and has in part attempted it, was intimated by the Considerer: The Actions are fresh, and those Relations and Discourses which are Published, make every man a judge; If Mr Harrington be satisfied that their actions resisted not 
H. p. 98.  the Interest of Liberty, but of a Lord, He may deserve a pension in communicating this satisfaction to them of Zealand, Frizeland and Overyssell.  
A third sort of Commonwealths are those which consist not of Leagues or Unions, neither are seated in some one great City, but are diffused through a whole Nation, and are not to be assembled but by the Mediation of a Representative Body: Of this kind you are not to expect many Examples; Israel (when it shall be evinced to have been a Commonwealth) must needs have been such an one, and such an one is the proposed Model of a Commonwealth for Oceana. In these the disproportionate Greatness of any one City, becomes still more dangerous, for now this City is no longer to be reputed the Head or Heart, but the Spleen or Liver, whose overgrowth brings the rest of the Body to Decay or Ruin. Any one City so overtopping the Rest constitutes Rempublicam in Republica, and the Inhabitants of it will always stand united in reference to their own Interest even when it looks a squint upon that of the Commonwealth. In Israel indeed they need not to fear this Inconvenience, for it does not appear that before the establishment of the Monarchy, any one City had so much advantage over the rest as to claim the Dignity of a Metropolis. But in Monarchies the Mischief has been frequent; Paris both formerly and in our time has been the Rise and Retreat of several Rebellions, Ghendt and Liege have more than once done as much for their Princes, In Spain the War de las Communidades took its beginning from Toledo, Valladolid, Valentia and two or three more great Towns. And that the mischief should be multiplied in a Commonwealth, I have one reason more to think, which is that a Monarch can by the Residence of his Court, that brings so ample profit to a City, lay an obligation upon them, which in a Commonwealth can amount to very little, or rather Nothing. To make an end, the City of Emporium is already so Potent That it may will be doubted whether she will be content with that portion Mr Harrington has allowed her in his Commonwealth of Oceana, and whether when she loses the Honour of obeying a Prince, she will not think her Common Council as good as the Prerogative Tribe, and her Commander in Chief as the Strategus of Oceana.  
Therefore those of the Nobility who have disposed of their Sons in the City may fairly expect to see them Princes, The rest may do well to consider whether the bear's skin will keep them warm while it is upon the Bears back, and whether they can live upon the reversion of those Estates Mr Harrington has promised 
H. p. 100  them in the first Provinces his Commonwealth conquers.  
The fourth Argument was taken from the difficulty of making the Agrarian equal and steady in reference to the inconstant value of money: But this says He, was sufficiently provided for 
H. p. 101.  where it is said that a new survey at the present Rent being taken, the Agrarian should ordain that no man should thenceforth hold above so much Land as there is valued at the rate of 2000l. per an. Though this was omitted in the Order, I deny not that it was hinted in one of the speeches; but this is to recompense one error by committing another that is greater, or to cure an Ague by a ; The value of mony'tis true is always in motion, but not in so swift and irregular one, as the Improvement of Land I speak not of the improvement of Rent, or the advantage the Landlord makes upon the Farmer, but of that Natural one which sometimes consist in the Meliorating of the soil itself, as by derivation of Water; Sometimes in the Discovery of a profitable Mineral; And sometimes by employing the ground to a new Husbandry as the planting Tobacco, Hops, and many other things which have already and may for the future be invented. By all these ways, the value of Land may come to be many times multiplied, and consequently the Agrarian notwithstanding this Provision must soon recede from the first Design of its institution. He need not now have been put in mind of this, if he would have learned this Lesson of Aristotle, That those Orders in a Commonwealth 
Pol. lib. 5. cap. 8.  which relate to the Census or Valuation of Estates, must be renewed and adapted continually to the Census through all its shift and Changes, and this at furthest once in five years.  
That the Agrarian does not stem, but follow the Tide of Custom in this Nation, will scarce meet with Belief, notwithstanding Mr Harrington's undertaking, as long as We have before our eyes so many examples of Elder Brothers and great Purchasers. But I mean not to trouble him with any Discourses about keeping or breaking old Customs; That would be as to this subject but a Common place of talk, and if the Agrarian be a thing so customary, his pains in discovering of it, merit the less of thanks from the Public; For though we usually give Money to those who show Us an Hare or Partridge, it has not been made a fashion to reward such as bring Us to a Crow or a Jack-Daw.  
After all this, that an Agrarian is necessary 
H. pag. 102.  unto Government be it what it will, and as much to Kings as unto Commonwealths, I can not give my assent; The Reasons of my not doing so, have been made out abundantly, unless I have had the ill fortune to throw away all that has been said in this Chapter and that of the Balance. I do not deny that these Notions are of good concernment, if taken in general, and without this severe Restriction to Estates in Land. I lay it for a ground that Princes ought to consider Riches as one of the principal instruments of Governing; That in order to this They should not think a Crown worth wearing, unless provided with a Constant Revenue, (or at least a way of raising it) large enough for all Public Occasions; That they wear the Key of their Treasury, with the same Jealousy as their Sword, permitting neither to be taken out of their own hands. For the rest, That they take care those men whose interest is dependant upon the Prince's may be possessed of such estates as shall bring them a Return of Respect and Power. The favour of the Prince, the Profit of Offices, the Advantages arising from Public Employment both Military and of State, joined with other Arts of Governing, will in a Monarchy put fair for attaining this, without the necessity of an Agrarian Law: Nor on the other side does a Prince stand in need of that help to abate the Power of any Subject that is grown dangerous, but is readily presented with some more silent way of effecting it from the present Juncture of Business. And indeed universally Monarchies have this advantage over Commonwealths, that Commonwealths are like Engines which being wound up can not in the greatest necessity vary from the Designation of the Artificer, but Monarchies are animate Bodies, moving and acting according to all exigencies by virtue of their own Souls: The former like the wooden Eagle which met the Emperor limited in her flight by the will of the Engineer, The other has Wings of her own, and when she sees the Quarry, fails not to make a gallant flight.   

CHAP. XII.  
Whether Courses or Rotation be necessary to a well ordered Commonwealth, etc.  
IN this long Chapter the Considerer has a very small share. It is intended against another sort of People who though they are passionate Doters on a Commonwealth, profess to dislike the Introduction of a Rotation. This has proceeded so far as to cause a Schism among the Commonwealthsmen, For whilst some of them think that without the Rotation a Commonwealth must (like Pharoah's Chariots) clog and drive heavily; others suspect this continnal whirling would produce nothing but giddiness and a Danger of overturning. Yet there is some Reason to doubt this Difference is not rooted in their Judgements so much as in their Interests: They who expect to fill a place in a standing Counsel, are not pleased to think of resigning, after a certain Term, their Cushions to new Comers; But such who despair of that advantage, rather than be wholly shut out would willingly take Turns, governing themselves by the Advice of our wise Ancestors, rather to be content with half a Loaf then have no Bread.  
But this being matter of conjecture, I will let it pass, left I happen to mistake their meaning as much as Mr Harrington does mine; Who all along this Chapter treats me as one of those who maintain a Commonwealth while she is fixed upon standing Counsels and Armies, to be better ordered then when she goes upon Rotation. But this is manifest; That I concede Rotation to have been the practice of Ancient Republics, and I do not any where discover that I think a Commonwealth can be safe without it. It is true that judging Rotation to be in itself not very just, and often prejudicial to public Affairs, I can not approve of that Government which stands in need of such an Order; so that my Quarrel lies not against Rotation where I find it in a Commonwealth, but against Commonwealths because they are by the necessary care of their Preservation, forced to embrace Rotation.  
The Examples therefore of Israel, Athens and Venice do not any way concern Me: Though it were an easy matter to show that the Proofs of a Rotation in Israel are very wild and unconcluding, if I had not an Obligation upon Me to abstain from enquiring any further into that Government. Concerning Venice, as He has brought forth nothing that's new to one who is not a stranger to Giannotti, so will his Riddle easily meet with a Solution out of that Author. If he would make 2 or 3 dozen of these Riddles, and put them into Rhyme, (which to him cannot be difficult) if they did not please the Counsel of State, they would at least be admirably useful to the new Junta of Political Ladies, who by them would find Diversion for Winter Evenings, without descending from the Gravity of their new affected studies, Laws and Government.  
All then that I need to do is to make good this Assertion, That Commonwealths have by the Observation of their Rotation been put upon great and Dangerous Inconveniences. To prove this the Examples of Veturius, Varro, Mancinus and other weak and passionate Commanders employed by the Romans, were insisted on by the Considerer: Which Mr Harrington interprets most extravagantly as if there were but 
H. pag. 122.  three weak or unfortunate Generals in the whole course of Rome. He that names three, with the addition of a general clause comprehending the rest, is not, I conceive, with any Honesty to be understood, as if he thought there were but three in all. If it be any pleasure to Mr Harrington to view a List of unfortunate Roman Generals, let him cast his eyes upon the Fabii, Sulpitius Longus Q. and P. Servilius, Claudius Pulcher, Sempronius, C. Flaminius, Vitilius, Plautius, Popilius, Manilius, Lentulus, Piso, Hypsoeus, L. Cassius, Scaurus, Coepio, Rutilius, and many more which might be reckoned up if it were my design to count the black days in the Roman Calendar. I selected those three because by their want of Experience and Conduct Rome received the greatest and most ignominious defeats that ever befell Her.  
Veturius (or Posthumius if he will needs lay the miscarriage chief upon him) threw away himself and the Roman Army very ridiculously; For having taken no Care, by Spies or Intelligence of his own, to be informed of the Posture and Condition of the Enemy, He relied wholly upon the Report of Prisoners, which 
Liv. lib. 9  is always uncertain and very often Suborned. Being thus put upon a long March with a thought to find that Enemy at Luceria who was then close by him, he engaged the Army in a deep Valley shut up on every side with steep Rocks and thick Forests, accessible only by two narrow and difficult Passages: And here he committed an Error far more gross and withal irreparable; For either he did omit, contrary to the known Maxims of War, to discover the Country through which his March lay, or knowing it (as is more probable) he neglected, by a strange Stupidity, to secure himself of either of the two Passes; So that finding the furthest guarded and barricadoed by the Enemy, before he could get back the other was surprised also, and the whole Roman Army caught in this Trap. Now it is evident that this loss befell the Romans, not by the Valour or Experience of their Enemies, but merely by the Insufficiency of their own Commanders, who probably had never been employed, but for the Orders of their Rotation; The Commonwealth had at that time Fabius, Papyrius, and many other brave Commanders, who in submitting to the Rotation were fain to resign the Conduct of the Army to such raw Men as could Court the Suffrages of the People for the Consulship.  
As for Varro, it is observable that his Election (like that of Flaminius the Consul of the 
Liv. lib. 22.  former year who lost the great Battle at the Lake of Thrasimene) was carried merely upon a Faction against the Nobility, without any other Merit in the Person, than his Sycophantry in accusing the Conduct of the Senate, and flattery to the People in promising them to put a sudden end to the War: In his year was that Stupendous defeat received at Cannae which is by Polybius wholly imputed to his ill Manage We may fairly take notice that the Dangers into which Rome was so often precipitated during the War with Annibal, took their Rise from the frequent Change of Commanders; For there is just ground in the Histories of those Actions of believing that if Scipio the elder, Fabius, or Marcellus had had the sole manage of the War, Hannibal could never have settled himself in Italy, but being consumed by want and small Skirmishes must presently have abandoned the Country; Whilst on the other hand, the Commanders being changed every year, unexperienced Men came to be at the head of the Army, who hoping to get Honour, at the Charges of the Commonwealth, put things upon the hazardous Issue of set Battles And this is naturally and directly to be charged upon their Orders of Rotation.  
Concerning Hostilius Mancinus, the foulness of his miscarriage appears in this, that having 30000 Men he was defeated by 4000 Numantines; And that the fault was only in the General, was the Judgement of the Romans 
Florus & Brev. Livii. lib. 55. & 57  themselves, who therefore committing the care of the War to Scipio (though expressly against their Laws of Rotation) he made an end of it with the same Forces which had been so often beaten. But it can not scape our wonder, that Mr Harrington should think fit to communicate 
H. p. 125.  the Gild of those Miscarriages to Pompey the Great, who had no being in the World till thirty year after: It is true that Q. Pompeius Rufus received a foil from the Numantines, Anno V. C. 616. but by what secret Participation of Gild can this concern Cn. Pompeius Magnus who was not born till about the year V C. 647? We might with equal Justice make the Translator of Virgil be responsible for all the faults in the Translation of Orlando Furioso.  
Having thus sufficiently proved that these three great Defeats befell the Romans merely through the weakness of their Commanders, as also that these weak Commanders could not, (in all Probability) ever have come into that Employment but through the Orders of Rotation, it would be altogether useless to accumulate any more Examples out of the Roman Stories. I may then go on to confirm the same Observation out of the Athenian History; Which Commonwealth besides the annual Rotation of her Generals, was good at another Trick often made Use of by Republics out of a Jealousy of trusting too much Power in one hand: This was to confer the Command, not upon any one Person, but to place it upon many, or in a Commission, so that They have frequently had at once in one Army ten Generals. At Aegos-potamos they were no fewer, and their Sottishness as well as their Number considered, I can not study out any Term to fit them so properly as that of a Rabble. Conon was indeed a brave Commander, but his single Vote could not prevail against the Obstinacy of his Companions. At that time Alcibiades was the only 
Thueyd. l. 6.  Man who had credit and Ability enough to have saved the Athenian State; But He out of the People's Jealousy of him, and by the Orders of their Rotation being laid a side, Tydeus, Philocles, and as many as served to make up the half Score of Generals, were entrusted with the whole Naval Power then remaining to the Athenian Commonwealth, 
Plut. & Xenoph.  which they totally lost at Aegos-potamos by one of the most Palpable and wilful Errors that perhaps, was ever committed in War. It is not to be expected I should bring another Example from the Athenian History, since this Error was one of those which can not be committed twice, and Athens itself being a while after taken in Consequence of this Defeat, They had not any more Fleets or Armies to throw away by their Rotation.  
But, replies Mr Harrington, had there been formerly no Rotation in Athens how should there have been Men of Valour and Conduct to lie by the Walls? And if Rotation thenceforth should 
H. pag. 125.  have ceased, how could those Men of Valour and Conduct have done other than lie by the Walls? So this avoidable confesseth, that Rotation was the Means whereby Athens came to be stored with Persons of Valour and Conduct, and They to be capable of Employment. In Answer to this goodly Argument, let Me inquire of him, What Rotation was there in the Armies of the Netherlands? Yet we know there was a time when almost all the able Soldiers of Christendom came out of that School. Or let him show Me the Orders of Rotation at present in France, which Crown notwithstanding abounds with more Persons capable of high Commands, than all Europe besides. In small Employments, it is not Rotation, or the passing through many hands, that can beget able Men, and in great Actions Men of great Abilities will grow up without the help of Rotation; So that if Athens or Rome have produced such Illustrious 
H. pag. 126.  Examples, it is very Impertinent to attribute this to Rotation or the Integrity of Popular, Suffrage, but to the great Employments, in which by reason of their continual Wars, those Commonwealths brought up their Subjects.  
Since He has mentioned the Integrity of Popular Suffrage, it must not be let pass without our Animadversion, where he says That the 
Ibid.  Ballot bars Canvasing, beyond all Possibility of any such thing. No doubt the Secrecy introduced by the Ballot, is a fair Guardian of Liberty in Voting; but if We examine the matter more narrowly, We shall easily perceive that this hardly extends to more than a removing the Awe imposed upon Men by Fear, and that all the Engagements of Affection, Flattery, and Bribery are not in the least weakened by the Ballot. And therefore We may justly infer that the Orders of Oceana are in this point Defective, (for the Provision in the ninth order falls far short of a Cure) as were those of Venice before the Introduction of the Censor's Office: For till then, notwithstanding the Ballot, the Gentlemen held secret Correspondences for the mutual gratifying one another's Ambition, and some directly sold their Votes; which makes Giannotti judge, That, without the Censors who have power given them to prevent it, This single Disorder had been enough to have everted the Commonwealth. And conformable to this is the Experience of the Conclaves held for Electing of the Popes, where since Gregory the 15, all ways of making the Pope are forbid, but that of secret Scrutiny which is so managed that in effect it is the same thing with the Ballot: And yet the Examples of succeeding Conclaves 
Relat. Ital. M. S. delli Conclavi.  testify, That the Power and Influence of the Heads of Factions over their Creatures, is scarce at all diminished by this Course.  
To return to Rotation, As the mischiess by it derived upon a Commonwealth are apparent, in the next place I am to show how it has not been counted so Sacred, but that it has often been sacrificed to the Public Exigencies. Machiavelli furnishes Me with the early Example of Publilius Philo at Palepolis. When the Numantines had by the bravery of their Resistance provoked the Rage and Disdain of the Roman People, not to trifle out the War any longer under weak Commanders, The People gave Scipio the Consulship, though he were then uncapable of it by the Law of Rotation which required a Vacation of ten years between two 
Brev. Liv.  Consulships. The Lacedæmonians indeed were more Hypocritical, while out of scruple of violating their Rotation they cheated themselves with the Name and outside of things; The case I refer to was in Lysander, who had in the year 
Plut. Xenoph.  of his Admiralty laid great Designs for carrying on the War against Athens, and rendered himself very acceptable to the Lacedaemonian Confederates on the coasts of Asia; At Sparta there was a Law that no man should be twice Admiral, and yet it being highly expedient for their Affairs to give Lysander the Command again, They fell upon an expedient somewhat ridiculous in the hands of Wise men; Aracus an inconsiderable Person was made Admiral, and Lysander had the Commission of Vice-admiral with the whole Power and authority of Admiral. Such shifts are those States put to who think the supreme Public interest can be regulated by any certain Laws?  
If then the Laws of Rotation have so frequently vailed Bonnet to the Ambition or Desire of Acquisition in Commonwealths, it cannot seem strange they should do so in case of necessary preservation. In all the course of the Roman Affairs We can scarce meet with a time more destitute of great Actions, and by consequence of great Commanders, then that immediately following the third Punic and Numantine Wars: Yet in that time the blackest and fiercest tempest broke upon the Romans that ever they were exposed to, except that which some hundreds of years after shipwrackt their Empire; The Cimbres, Teutons, and Ambrons', fierce Northern Nations, to the number of at least 300000 fight men; besides an equal Company of Women and Children to supply them with Recruits, poured themselves down upon Italy; Four Roman Armies had 
Plut. in Mar.  been defeated by them, nor could the Alps and Winter to boot, be any obstacle to their March; In this condition what should the Romans do? They had but one Commander C. Marius, to whom in the Public Judgement the manage of the War could be with any safety committed, And he was at that time uncapable by the Laws of Rotation: Should they violate the Law? Or suffer the Barbarous Nations to come up to Rome without Opposition? The grave Statists were for the observation of the Law, but here it was the People's turn to be wise, and their fears were their best Counsellors. They thought fit to make bold with the Law for the Public Utility, and gave three Consulships together to Marius, in whose hands only they counted the Commonwealth secure. 
Brev. Liv. Lib. 3. cap. 3.  Actum erat, says Florus, nisi Marius illi soeculo contigisset.  
That this Prolongation of Empire to Marius, was the first step toward the Destruction of the Commonwealth is observed by Mr Harrington out of Machiavelli; And yet it is the consent of 
Png. 126, 127, & 128.  Historians that without the help of Marius the Commonwealth had then been destroyed by the Cimbres; This does beyond all Exception fortify my Notion, That a Commonwealth is an Imperfect form of Government, since she may be reduced to that Exigence as by either observing or violating her Laws to plunge herself into a certain Ruin. If Machiavelli has observed no other Dilemma in this, then That if a Commonwealth will not be so slow in her Acquisition as is required by Rotation, She will be less sure than is requisite to her Preservation, I am not responsible for his Inadvertency: But it was reasonable for me to expect that Mr Harrington, when I had presented him with a pair of Spectacles should have seen a little better and have taken notice that the prolongation of Empire to C. Marius was not in order to Conquest or Acquisition, but to the Preservation of Italy, and Rome itself.  
We have all this while advanced very little, if this Flaw which in Reference to Rotation, has been discovered in Commonwealths, be no less discernible in Monarchies; For than it is not a weakness seated in one Limb or Member, but a Disease that has seized upon the whole Body of Government: And this Mr Harrington insinuates when he tells Us, That a Prince whose 
H. p. 129.  Providence supplies not the defect of Rotation with something of like Nature, exposeth Himself if not his Empire as much unto Danger as a Commonwealth. Here I must put him in mind of the Difference, formerly observed by Me, between the Actions of a Prince and a Commonwealth even when they do the same Thing. A Commonwealth having no eyes of her own is forced to resign herself to the Conduct of Laws, which are blind too, though in a known Road they faithfully and without wand'ring perform the part of a Guide; But if a stone be laid, or a pit be digged in this Path, the Blind leading the Blind, they both fall, and then she runs a danger of her Neck. If in this Case a Commonwealth be beholding to some hand to lead her to avoid the Danger, it is odds she will never be able to free herself of the new Guide, who carrying her through unknown Ways in the end ravishes or strangles her. But a Prince having his Eyes about him chooses his own Way, and though for the General he keeps on the High Way of Laws, yet when that leads to a Precipice, he can see how to go about, till having scaped the Danger, he may safely return to the common Road. In disposing then of Public Employments a wise Prince observes no other Rotation but what is measured by the Ability and Integrity of the Person's employed, the present Necessity and future security of his Affairs, from the due mixture of all which results the Prince's behaviour as to the Placing, Displacing and Transplacing his Public Ministers whether Military or Civil; And all this is performed without being liable (unless by a particular error of the Prince's Judgement) to mistake or Danger. Whereas a Commonwealth that is tied up by the Laws of Rotation, knows not how to refuse the service of her weakest Subjects, or to embrace her most Able and Faithful ones (even in her greatest Exigencies) during the time of their Vacation, unless at the same moment she open a Gap to the Ambition of such men who will of servants endeavour to become her Masters. And this befalls a Commonwealth as she is a Government of Laws, which being framed upon an universal prospect, can not possibly, be fitted to particular incident occasions; so that a Government making profession to regulate itself in all things by Laws, must need be sometimes at a Loss, and is not unlike the great Land Crabs in some parts of America which walk always in a straight Line, and will rather than vary from it, climb over an house or a Tree.  
To what purpose then serves the Pompous Enumeration of such Princes as have been supplanted 
H. p. 129.  by their Favourites, or deposed by the Generals of their Armies? Yet it must not pass without Animadversion, That this Tragical List is in great Part made up of such Persons (as Sejanus, Perennis, Ruffinus Stilico, Wallestein &c.) whose unsuccesful Ambition serves for an excellent Lesson to keep great men within the bounds of Duty and Moderation. But at worst, if some weak and careless Princes by neglecting the Opportunities of their own Safety, have fallen by the hands of such as they trusted, this is no more an argument for Rotation, than it would be for going unarmed because some men have been killed by their own swords. I rather suspect that upon this occasion Mr Harrington intended a secret blow at the Head of Monarchy, by showing how liable that Government is to be ruined by the Usurpation of such Persons to whom Princes commit any extraordinary Power either in Civil or Military Affairs. But this he will find to be a common Calamity, not to be prevented by the Orders of any Government, but only by the particular Dexterity and Prudence of a Prince: I add not, Or of the Chief Ministers of a Commonwealth, because the Cure in a Commonwealth is in a manner Desperate, it being scarce Possible that any Citizen should arrive at so much Power as to become Dangerous, but that at the same time he will have Barricadoed all ways tending to the public Preservation, since those Counsels where it is to be debated, will be filled with his Friends and Dependants. And therefore we may put in the other scale, a great Heap of Instances of such Commonwealths as have been oppressed by those Persons to whom they had committed the conduct of their Affairs. Thus Pisistratus became Master of Athens, Cypselus, and after his Family Timophanes of Corinth, Dionysius and Agathocles of Syracuse, Panoetius and Icetes of Leontium, Cleander of Gela, Anaxilaus of Rhegium, Theagenes of Megara, Abantidas of Sicyon, Aristomachus o Argos, Polyphron of Larissa, Machanidas and Nabis of Lacedaemon. By this Caesar was enabled to convert the Roman Commonwealth into a Monarchy. And after that out of the Ruins of this Monarchy (like some goodly Palace pulled down to build Tenements) several Republics had been erected, They almost all were exposed to the same Fortune. Thus Pisa came under the Power of Vguccione della Faggivola, Lucca of Castrucio Castracana, Sienna of Petrucci, Florence of the Duke of Athens, Milan of the Count Francis Sforza, to omit the Examples of all the smaller Commonwealths. If I can not follow Mr Harrington into the East, it is because that wiser Quarter of the World have not been known to own any other then Monarchical Government.  
But let other Commonwealths answer for their own Follies or Misfortunes, the Commonwealth of Oceana is promised better success, and assured that she shall never want Men of Honesty and Ability to lead her to her true Interest at home and abroad. Nay more, Her Education for her Subjects is so excellent, that three year's Experience will serve to make them all very able 
H. p. 1●3.  Leaders. Is this a wonder to you? It is a mere Cheat this pretended Depth and Difficulty in matter of State; The Business rests upon the skill in managing the Balloting Box, and if a man have but the the Wit to know the Difference btween White and Black, & Red, What can hinder him 
P. 130.  from being a very expert Statesman? Though no man can continue longer than three years in any Magistracy, his going of the Stage will but make room for one as able as himself, otherwise how came it about that in Athens and Rome, where every body pressed forward toward Magistracy, (which with them was annual) the Magistrates were for illustrious Examples, more in weight and number then are to be found in all the rest of the World? Of this I have newly given an account, and will only add, That at Rome the Senate (which bred the able men) was perpetual, and both in Athens and Rome the Body of the People inhabiting within the walls of those Cities, they might continually be conversant in Business, and have a share in all Public Transactions: Whereas in England the People being dispersed through the whole Nation, are incapable of Business unless by their Representatives, which being all limited to Terms and Vacations, their Time of acquiring Experience may with very probable reason be thought too short. The only proper Judge of this Controversy is Experiment, and in that I think Mr Harrington, as well as the Nation, very Fortunate, that He is delivered from all Probability of seeing his Project reduced to Practise, For that would be more Terrible to Him, than a thousand Reams of Objections, and would easily detect those Errors and Defects in his Model of Government, which at present are but lightly viewed in passing, or not at all discovered.   
FINIS.   

AN APPENDIX By way of reply to what Mr Harrington calls A full Answer to all Objections.  
IT is a pretty Artifice in Mr Harrington to insinuate that because no man has gone about to discover any Contradiction or, Inequality in the Model of his Commonwealth; therefore it must be taken for granted his Commonwealth has not any such in it, and must consequently be void of all Internal causes of Dissolution. By this he endeavours to draw the world into an Opinion that his Commonwealth is Inunlnerable, and at the same time to fix a Disreputation upon the Author of the Considerations, as if he had failed in making out what he undertook. For what concerns Me as Author of the Considerations, having at the beginning made profession to restrain them to the first Preliminaries of Oceana, Mr Harrington is injurious in accusing Me in neglecting that which was no part of my Business, and which I always declared I did not intent to meddle with.  
But before that other Men make a surrender of their Judgement to Mr Harrington and believe upon the credit of this Argument that his Commonwealth has attained unto full Perfection, It will be convenient They should reflect, That in a Model of Government the Conformity of the several Parts to one another is not a sufficient argument of the Perfection of the whole; For as in a Fiction, the several Members may be so contrived as not to give one another the Lie, but be all contained within the limits of verisimilitude, and yet the whole remain without the least syllable of Truth; Or as for the Explication of any Motion in Nature, various Hypotheses may be excogitated including no Absurdity within themselves, and yet perhaps, not any one of them prove to be the true Method of Nature; so in Government, It is not difficult to invent variety of Forms, the parts of each of which taken separately, may maintain a fair Correspondence and Agreement among themselves, and yet the Whole be far enough from attaining to Perfection.  
The Materials of Government are Mankind, and the Architect woe disposes of these Materials is man also; so that Government is nothing else but an Art by which one part of Mankind disposes of the other for attaining the Common Utility of both, which consists in arriving at such a Degree of Plenty and Security as Mankind is capable of by society. This Art is not obliged to one solitary Method for attaining the End and Design proposed to it, but has sometimes made use of a Monarchy, sometimes of an aristocraty, sometimes of a Democraty, and in all these of several Frames and Models. But this art of Governing has a very disadvantageous Difference from all other Arts, for in them the Artificer makes choice only of such Materials as have the greatest aptitude for his work but in Government the Artificer is obliged to his Materials, and must grapple with all the Stubborness and Reluctancy He meets with in them; And it is an Error very incident to Mankind, that every particular Man thinks Government was instituted for his peculiar Advantage, which if he meets not with in a degree suitable to his Desire in the Government He lives under, He presently endeavours to subvert that Government out of hopes to meet with it in the next: Which is just as if the steel of which the Index of a Watch is composed should refuse to move out of a Discontent it was not employed about the Spring or Balance; and at this rate I believe the ablest Watchmaker would despair of giving us a true movement. So that though it should be allowed Mr Harrington that his Commonwealth has no Inequality in it, yet it would fail of attaining the perfection of Government, seeing there is an inequality in the Nature of Man, which is not rectified by the Model of his Commonwealth. What this Inequality consists in, how far it is capable of Cure, and how Mr Harrington has failed of performing it, was the subject of my 8th and 9th Chapters, and therefore is not now to be repeated.  
I do not intent to employ myself in picking the Feathers off Mr Harrington's Cloak, or going in search of the Inequalities or Contradictions in the orders of his Model; but I would be glad to know, Whether He be not unequal to Himself as well as the Nobility in such orders as particularly concern them Having by his Agrarian reduced the Nobility (under which name I also comprehend the Gentry of higher Quality) unto the Condition of clipped Money, He 
Ocean. p. 25.  notwithstanding appears very solicitous They should still be currant, and not be refused in the uses of the Commonwealth. To This purpose distinguishes the whole people into Horse and Foot, making the Horse to consist of such as have above one hundred pounds a year, and has provided that the Horse shall have divers advantages as that (to omit the lesser ones) the Senate and Great Magistrates shall consist of Knights elected out of their Number. But this favour to them is all this while but an handsome piece of Dissimulation; For though there be care taken that at the Assembly of the Hundred and Tribe such and such Magistrates shall be elected out of the Horse, there is no necessary provision there should be any Horse there, out of which to elect; For the Deputies at the Hundred and Tribe consisting of the Deputies elected at the Parish, It is a mere chance if in the Parish there were any Horse at all elected: The Elector or Proposer at the Parish are designed by the hap of drawing a Golden Ball out of the Urn, and these Electors or Proposer nominate the rest of the Deputies to be proposed to the Ballot, so that unless one of the Horse chance to prove an Elector by drawing a Golden Ball, the nomination is wholly in the power of the Foot, who would be very senseless, by nominating any of the Horse to part with that power which Fortune has put into their Hands. Now what small probability there is that any of the Horse should chance to draw a Golden Ball, will appear by the great disparity in number between the whole Body of the People and such as may only be capable of being of the Horse; It is confessed by Mr Harrington there is nothing in the Nature of the Agrarian to hinder, but that the whole Land in Oceana may come into the hands of 5000 Men; But the Elders or Men capable of Election are confessed to be 100000 Men; Wherefore the 5000 Men or the Horse (though they should as is most unprobable, be all of 30 years of Age and so Capable of Election) are but a twentieth part of Foot, and by Consequence it is twenty to one that at every Election of the Parish not any of the Horse come to be elected. By which it is evident there is a very great inequality in his Commonwealth, seeing by the orders of it Matters may with great Probability be reduced to that pass, That those men who have the whole Propriety in Land may be wholly excluded from having any share in the Government. It is apparent also, That the upper Rooms of his Commonwealth, such as are the Hundred, Tribe, Senate and Prerogative, are built upon a most ruinous Foundation, the Basis of the Parishes being too weak to support them, Thus having reduced the Nobility and Gentry to 2000l. per an. and having devested them of all the Advantages of Birth and Descent, He leaves them also after all at the discretion of their good Neighbours with the High shoes, in reference to their whole interest in the Government.  
But for all this he has dealt more kindly with the Nobility and Gentry, then with the three Faculties of Divines, Lawyers and Physicians; For though the Balance of Land, prove unprofitable to the Nobility, yet the Balance of Beef remaies still with them, And if against an Election Day they Feast my Lords of the People handsomely, They may still have hopes to be nominated by some of them; But the other are beyond all Possibility of retriving it, excluded from having any share in the Government; And that for this general Reason, They who take upon them the Profession of Theology, Physic or Law, are not 
Ocean. p. 224  at leisure for the Essays whereby the Youth commence for all Magistracies, Offices and Honours in a Commonwealth. It seems that he who has under a stall employed his Life in the Reparations of old shoes is qualifyed to fall to work with the Breaches of the State; And he whose converse has been nothing but whistling to Horses, has a sufficient Capacity to give Law to Mankind; But if any man's Education has been laid out in Pursuit of Truth and in a Familiarity with such Universal Notions & Reasons of Things, as tend to the advancement of Humane Nature, If He has afterward addicted himself in particular to such Studies upon which depend the safety of every Man in private, and of society in Common, That man must be deposed from the Privilege of a Citizen, and forfeit that Liberty which is the Foundation of all Popular Government, That every Man should concur to the making those Laws by which He is to be governed.  
The Clergy then or Divines will have Occasion to make use of all the Patience and Humility they preach to others, in reference to their submission to a Government which treats them as People uncapable of the Common Privileges of Men; The Quality of Ambassadors from Heaven which is usually attributed to them seems to be understood literally by Mr Harrington, For He considers them as Aliens, and so denies them the Liberty due to all English Men; And he has made a little bold with the Apostles argument, by changing the Inference of it, That because They serve at the Altar, therefore they are to be used as Slaves and Helots'.  
For the poor Physicians I least of all understand why They should be shut out from the Government whilst their Apothecaries are admitted to it, And why the Farrier should be made a better man than the Doctor. But there is no Help, They must be content to swallow this Pill, unless They can out of hand find Hellebore enough for our new Legislator.  
As to the Lawyers, there is a particular reason why they should have nothing to do with making of Laws, because it is enough for them that they can understand them when they are made; Yet there may be some cause to doubt, whether the whole Bench, and all the Inns of Court could find the way to understand such Laws as would be made by those men who are themselves obliged not to understand any. Howsoever Mr Harrington has that good persuasion of the whole profession of Lawyers, that He thinks they would betray the Public good, to the profit of their own Practice, and therefore resolves to banish them from all Interest in the Government; so that the Lawyers are in this, at least, highly obliged to Him, That he has given them fair leisure to turn their Books.  
Though every branch of these Orders be fertile of very dectructive Consequences, I do not intent to prosecute any of them, but am Content in general to observe, that the Commonwealth of Oceana which pretends so much to Equality, does wholly shut out the Professions of Divinity, Law, and Physic from any share in the Government, and leaves the Nobility and Gentry in a great probability of being reduced to the same Condition.  

WHile a Government is under Dispute, the Liberty of proposing one's sense about it ought not to be denied; But if it come once to be settled, Private men have nothing left but obedience. Having through the whole Book acted by the first Branch of this Maxim, it is fit I should now show how I can comply with the latter. And being conscious of a Disability in serving the Commonwealth of Oceana in any more important matter, I desire to show a respect to the Gentlemen of the Academy of the Provosts by presenting them with these following Collections.  
A Catalogue of such pieces of Wit in Mr Harrington's last Book which (though in themselves inimitable) may serve as a 
Ocean. p. 130.  Pattern for the Gentlemen of the Academy.  
THE Considerer hath doffed his considering Cap. in Praefat. A pig of my own Sow. p. 13. Monti and Banks, Mountebanking. p. 17. A man to be made of Gingerbread, and his veins to run Malmesy. p. 21. You tumble Dick upon Sis. p. 23. The Ostracism of Billingsgate. p. 26. Paralogism and Parakeetism. p. 28. My Hypothesis, his Hypothites. p. 30. Sons of the University, Brothers of the College, Heads and Points. ibid. If she who should have some care of the Vineyard of Truth, should lie pigging of wide bores to grunt in this manner and fear with the Tush, and I happen to ring some of them, (as I have done this Marcassin for rooting) there is nothing in my faith why such trial of their Noses should be sin. p. 76. Besides these a great number of choice Metaphors from Bowling, Carding, Dicing, and the like.  
An account of several Forms of Compliment and Address used by Mr Harrington, which may be serviceable to the great Design of improving Civility and Conversation, 
Ocean. p. 130  which is entrusted with the Academy.  
PRaevaricator, Infidel, Wretch, Rude fellow, Uulucky Boy, Tom Thumb, Bestia, Parrot, Ape, Tinker, Neither Honest Man nor good Bowler, Cheat, Blind Bayard etc. these are applicable to a person. For a Book such appellations as these may be used. Most victorious Nonsense, Slanders, Fopperies, Vagaries, Knavery, Tittle tattle, Verjuice. A Doctor is to be saluted thus; You are a Doctor of fine things, Your Cap is squarer than your play, you have more in your sleeves then the scarlet, etc. You are a Bog, Informis limus, stygiaeque Paludes, This would do admirably to our neighbours of the Low Countries. You jowl your presumptuous head not only against ancient prudence but against God himself. You take part with the Devil etc.   
FINIS.