The Commonwealth of Oceana Part 7

Agrarian laws of all others have ever been the greatest bugbears, and so in the inst.i.tution were these, at which time it was ridiculous to see how strange a fear appeared in everybody of that which, being good for all, could hurt n.o.body. But instead of the proof of this order, I shall out of those many debates that happened ere it could be pa.s.sed, insert two speeches that were made at the Council of legislators, the first by the Right Honorable Philautus de Garbo, a young man, being heir-apparent to a very n.o.ble family, and one of the councillors, who expressed himself as follows:

"May it please your Highness, my Lord Archon of Oceana.

"If I did not, to my capacity, know from how profound a councillor I dissent, it would certainly be no hard task to make it as light as the day. First, that an agrarian is altogether unnecessary; secondly, that it is dangerous to a commonwealth; thirdly, that it is insufficient to keep out monarchy; fourthly, that it ruins families; fifthly, that it destroys industry; and last of all, that though it were indeed of any good use, it will be a matter of such difficulty to introduce in this nation, and so to settle that it may be lasting, as is altogether invincible.

"First, that an agrarian is unnecessary to a commonwealth, what clearer testimony can there be than that the commonwealths which are our contemporaries (Venice, to which your Highness gives the upper hand of all antiquity, being one) have no such thing? And there can be no reason why they have it not, seeing it is in the sovereign power at any time to establish such an order, but that they need it not; wherefore no wonder if Aristotle, who pretends to be a good commonwealths man, has long since derided Phaleas, to whom it was attributed by the Greeks, for his invention.

"Secondly, that an agrarian is dangerous to a commonwealth is affirmed upon no slight authority seeing Machiavel is positive that it was the dissension which happened about the agrarian that caused the destruction of Rome; nor do I think that it did much better in Lacedaemon, as I shall show anon.

"Thirdly, that it is insufficient to keep out monarchy cannot without impiety be denied, the holy Scriptures bearing witness that the Commonwealth of Israel, notwithstanding her agrarian, submitted her neck to the arbitrary yoke of her princes.

"Fourthly, therefore, to come to my next a.s.sertion, that it is destructive to families: this also is so apparent, that it needs pity rather than proof. Why alas, do you bind a n.o.bility (which no generation shall deny to have been the first that freely sacrificed their blood to the ancient liberties of this people) on an unholy altar? Why are the people taught that their liberty, which, except our n.o.ble ancestors had been born, must have long since been buried, cannot now be born except we be buried? A commonwealth should have the innocence of the dove. Let us leave this purchase of her birth to the serpent, which eats itself out of the womb of its mother.

"Fifthly but it may be said, perhaps, that we are fallen from our first love, become proud and idle. It is certain, my lords, that the hand of G.o.d is not upon us for nothing. But take heed how you admit of such a.s.saults and sallies upon men's estates, as may slacken the nerve of labor, and give others also reason to believe that their sweat is vain; or else, whatsoever be pretended, your agrarian (which is my fifth a.s.sertion) must indeed destroy industry. For, that so it did in Lacedaemon is most apparent, as also that it could do no otherwise, where every man having his forty quarters of barley, with wine proportionable, supplied him out of his own lot by his laborer or helot; and being confined in that to the scantling above which he might not live, there was not any such thing as a trade, or other art, except that of war, in exercise. Wherefore a Spartan, if he were not in arms, must sit and play with his Angers, whence ensued perpetual war, and, the estate of the city being as little capable of increase as that of the citizens, her inevitable ruin. Now what better ends you can propose to yourselves in the like ways, I do not so well see as I perceive that there may be worse; for Lacedaemon yet was free from civil war: but if you employ your citizens no better than she did, I cannot promise you that you shall fare so well, because they are still desirous of war that hope that it may be profitable to them; and the strongest security you can give of peace, is to make it gainful. Otherwise men will rather choose that whereby they may break your laws, than that whereby your laws may break them. Which I speak not so much in relation to the n.o.bility or such as would be holding, as to the people or them that would be getting; the pa.s.sion in these being so much the stronger, as a man's felicity is weaker in the fruition of things, than in their prosecution and increase.

"Truly, my lords, it is my fear, that by taking of more hands, and the best from industry, you will farther endamage it, than can be repaired by laying on a few, and the worst; while the n.o.bility must be forced to send their sons to the plough, and, as if this were not enough, to marry their daughters also to farmers.

"Sixthly, but I do not see (to come to the last point) how it is possible that this thing should be brought about, to your good I mean, though it may to the destruction of many. For that the agrarian of Israel, or that of Lacedaemon, might stand, is no such miracle; the lands, without any consideration of the former proprietor, being surveyed and cast into equal lots, which could neither be bought, nor sold, nor multiplied: so that they knew whereabout to have a man. But in this nation no such division can be introduced, the lands being already in the hands of proprietors, and such whose estates lie very rarely together, but mixed one with another being also of tenures in nature so different, that as there is no experience that an agrarian was ever introduced in such a case, so there is no appearance how or reason why it should: but that which is against reason and experience is impossible."

The case of my Lord Philautus was the most concerned in the whole nation; for he had four younger brothers, his father being yet living, to whom he was heir of 10,000 a year. Wherefore being a man both of good parts and esteem, his words wrought both upon men's reason and pa.s.sions, and had borne a stroke at the head of the business, if my Lord Archon had not interposed the buckler in this oration:

"MY LORDS, THE LEGISLATORS OF OCEANA:

"My Lord Philautus has made a thing which is easy to seem hard; if the thanks were due to his eloquence, it would be worthy of less praise than that he owes it to his merit, and the love he has most deservedly purchased of all men: nor is it rationally to be feared that he who is so much beforehand in his private, should be in arrear in his public, capacity. Wherefore, my lord's tenderness throughout his speech arising from no other principle than his solicitude lest the agrarian should be hurtful to his country, it is no less than my duty to give the best satisfaction I am able to so good a patriot, taking every one of his doubts in the order proposed. And,

"First, whereas my lord, upon observation of the modern commonwealths, is of opinion that an agrarian is not necessary: it must be confessed that at the first sight of them there is some appearance favoring his a.s.sertion, but upon accidents of no precedent to us. For the commonwealths of Switzerland and Holland, I mean of those leagues, being situated in countries not alluring the inhabitants to wantonness, but obliging them to universal industry, have an implicit agrarian in the nature of them: and being not obnoxious to a growing n.o.bility (which, as long as their former monarchies had spread the wing over them, could either not at all be hatched, or was soon broken) are of no example to us, whose experience in this point has been to the contrary. But what if even in these governments there be indeed an explicit agrarian? For when the law commands an equal or near equal distribution of a man's estate in land among his children, as it is done in those countries, a n.o.bility cannot grow; and so there needs no agrarian, or rather there is one.

And for the growth of the n.o.bility in Venice (if so it be, for Machiavel observes in that republic, as a cause of it, a great mediocrity of estates) it is not a point that she is to fear, but might study, seeing she consists of nothing else but n.o.bility, by which, whatever their estates suck from the people, especially if it comes equally, is digested into the better blood of that commonwealth, which is all, or the greatest, benefit they can have by acc.u.mulation. For how unequal soever you will have them to be in their incomes, they have officers of the pomp, to bring them equal in expenses, or at least in the ostentation or show of them. And so unless the advantage of an estate consists more in the measure than in the use of it, the authority of Venice does but enforce our agrarian; nor shall a man evade or elude the prudence of it, by the authority of any other commonwealth.

"For if a commonwealth has been introduced at once, as those of Israel and Lacedaemon, you are certain to find her underlaid with this as the main foundation; nor, if she is obliged more to fortune than prudence, has she raised her head without musing upon this matter, as appears by that of Athens, which through her defect in this point, says Aristotle, introduced her ostracism, as most of the democracies of Greece. But, not to restrain a fundamental of such lat.i.tude to any one kind of government, do we not yet see that if there be a sole landlord of a vast territory, he is the Turk? that if a few landlords overbalance a populous country, they have store of servants? that if a people be in an equal balance, they can have no lords? that no government can otherwise be erected, than upon some one of these foundations? that no one of these foundations (each being else apt to change into some other) can give any security to the government, unless it be fixed? that through the want of this fixation, potent monarchy and commonwealths have fallen upon the heads of the people, and accompanied their own sad ruins with vast effusions of innocent blood? Let the fame, as was the merit of the ancient n.o.bility of this nation, be equal to or above what has been already said, or can be spoken, yet have we seen not only their glory but that of a throne, the most indulgent to and least invasive for so many ages upon the liberty of a people that the world has known, through the mere want of fixing her foot by a proportionable agrarian upon her proper foundation, to have fallen with such horror as has been a spectacle of astonishment to the whole earth. And were it well argued from one calamity, that we ought not to prevent another? Nor is Aristotle so good a commonwealths man for deriding the invention of Phaleas as in recollecting himself, where he says that democracies, when a less part of their citizens overtop the rest in wealth, degenerate into oligarchies and princ.i.p.alities; and, which comes nearer to the present purpose, that the greater part of the n.o.bility of Tarentum coming accidentally to be ruined, the government of the few came by consequence to be changed into that of the many.

"These things considered, I cannot see how an agrarian, as to the fixation or security of a government, can be less than necessary. And if a cure be necessary, it excuses not the patient, his disease being otherwise desperate, that it is dangerous; which was the case of Rome, not so stated by Machiavel, where he says, that the strife about the agrarian caused the destruction of that commonwealth. As if when a senator was not rich (as Cra.s.sus held) except he could pay an army, that commonwealth could expect nothing but ruin whether in strife about the agrarian, or without it. 'Of late,' says Livy, 'riches have introduced avarice, and voluptuous pleasures abounding have through l.u.s.t and luxury begot a desire of lasting and destroying all good orders.' if the greatest security of a commonwealth consists in being provided with the proper antidote against this poison, her greatest danger, must be from the absence of an agrarian, which is the whole truth of the Roman example. For the Laconic, I shall reserve the further explication of it, as my lord also did, to another place; and first see whether an agrarian proportioned to a popular government be sufficient to keep out monarchy.

My lord is for the negative, and fortified by the people of Israel electing a king. To which I say that the action of the people therein expressed is a full answer to the objection of that example; for the monarchy neither grew upon them, nor could; by reason of the agrarian, possibly have invaded them, if they had not pulled it upon themselves by the election of a king. Which being an accident, the like whereof is not to be found in any other people so planted, nor in this till, as it is manifest, they were given up by G.o.d to infatuation (for says he to Samuel, 'They have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them,), has something in it which is apparent, by what went before, to have been besides the course of nature, and by what followed.

"For the King having no other foundation than the calamities of the people, so often beaten by their enemies, that despairing of themselves they were contented with any change, if he had peace as in the days of Solomon, left but a slippery throne to his successor, as appeared by Rehoboam. And the agrarian, notwithstanding the monarchy thus introduced, so faithfully preserved the root of that commonwealth, that it shot forth oftener and by intervals continued longer than any other government, as may be computed from the inst.i.tution of the same by Joshua, 1,465 years before Christ, to the total dissolution of it, which happened in the reign of the emperor Adrian, 135 years after the incarnation. A people planted upon an equal agrarian, and holding to it, if they part with their liberty, must do it upon good-will, and make but a bad t.i.tle of their bounty. As to instance yet further in that which is proposed by the present order to this nation, the standard whereof is at 2,000 a year; the whole territory of Oceana being divided by this proportion, amounts to 5,000 lots. So the lands of Oceana being thus distributed, and bound to this distribution, can never fall to fewer than 5,000 proprietors. But 5,000 proprietors so seized will not agree to break the agrarian, for that were to agree to rob one another; nor to bring in a king, because they must maintain him, and can have no benefit by him; nor to exclude the people, because they can have as little by that, and must spoil their militia. So the commonwealth continuing upon the balance proposed, though it should come into 5,000 hands, can never alter, and that it should ever come into 5,000 hands is as improbable as anything in the world that is not altogether impossible.

"My lord's other considerations are more private, as that, this order destroys families; which is as if one should lay the ruin of some ancient castle to the herbs which usually grow out of them, the destruction of those families being that indeed which naturally produced this order. For we do not now argue for that which we would have, but for that which we are already possessed of, as would appear if a note were but taken of all such as have at this day above 2,000 a year in Oceana. If my lord should grant (and I will put it with the most) that they who are proprietors in land, exceeding this proportion, exceed not 300, with what brow can the interest of so few be balanced with that of the whole nation? or rather, what interest have they to put in such a balance? they would live as they had been accustomed to do; who hinders them? they would enjoy their estates; who touches them? they would dispose of what they have according to the interest of their families; it is that which we desire. A man has one son, let him be called; would he enjoy his father's estate? it is his, his son's, and his son's son's after him. A man has five sons, let them be called; would they enjoy their father's estate? It is divided among them; for we have four votes for one in the same family, and therefore this must be the interest of the family, or the family knows not its own interest. If a man shall dispute otherwise, he must draw his arguments from custom and from greatness, which was the interest of the monarchy, not of the family; and we are now a commonwealth. If the monarchy could not bear with such divisions because they tendered to a commonwealth, neither can a commonwealth connive at such acc.u.mulations because they tend to a monarchy. If the monarchy might make bold with so many for the good of one, we may make bold with one for the good of so many, nay, for the good of all.

"My lords, it comes into my mind, that which upon occasion of the variety of parties enumerated in our late civil wars, was said by a friend of mine coming home from his travels, about the latter end of these troubles; that he admired how it came to pa.s.s, that younger brothers, especially being so many more in number than their elder did not unite as one man against a tyranny, the like whereof has not been exercised in any other nation. And truly, when I consider that our countrymen are none of the worst-natured, I must confess I marvel much how it comes to pa.s.s that we should use our children as we do our puppies--take one, lay it in the lap, feed it with every good bit, and drown five; nay, yet worse, forasmuch as the puppies are once drowned, whereas the children are left perpetually drowning. Really, my lords, it is a flinty custom! and all this for his cruel ambition, that would raise himself a pillar a golden pillar for his monument, though he has children, his own reviving flesh, and a kind of immortality. And this is that interest of a family, for which we are to think ill of a government that will not endure it. But quiet ourselves; the land through which the river Nilus wanders in one stream, is barren; but where it parts into seven, it multiplies its fertile sh.o.r.es by distributing, yet keeping and improving, such a propriety and nutrition, as is a prudent agrarian to a well-ordered commonwealth.

"Nor (to come to the fifth a.s.sertion) is a political body rendered any fitter for industry by having one gouty and another withered leg, than a natural. It tends not to the improvement of merchandise that there be some who have no need of their trading, and others that are not able to follow it. If confinement discourages industry, an estate in money is not confined, and lest industry should want whereupon to work, land is not engrossed or entailed upon any man, but remains at its devotion.

I wonder whence the computation can arise, that this should discourage industry. Two thousand pounds a year a man may enjoy in Oceana, as much in Panopea, 500 in Marpesia; there be other plantations, and the commonwealth will have more. Who knows how far the arms of our agrarian may extend themselves? and whether he that might have left a pillar, may not leave a temple of many pillars to his more pious memory? Where there is some measure in riches, a man may be rich, but if you will have them to be infinite, there will be no end of starving himself, and wanting what he has: and what pains does such a one take to be poor Furthermore, if a man shall think that there may be an industry less greasy or more n.o.ble, and so cast his thoughts upon the commonwealth, he will have leisure for her and she riches and honors for him; his sweat shall smell like Alexander's. My Lord Philautus is a young man who, enjoying his 10,000 a year, may keep a n.o.ble house in the old way, and have homely guests; and having but two, by the means proposed, may take the upper hand of his great ancestors; with reverence to whom, I may say, there has not been one of them would have disputed his place with a Roman consul.

"My lord, do not break my heart; the n.o.bility shall go to no other ploughs than those which we call our consuls. But, says he, it having been so with Lacedaemon, that neither the city nor the citizens were capable of increase, a blow was given by that agrarian, which ruined both. And what are we concerned with that agrarian, or that blow while our citizens and our city (and that by our agrarian) are both capable of increase? The Spartan, if he made a conquest, had no citizens to hold it; the Oceaner will have enow. The Spartan could have no trade; the Oceaner may have all. The agrarian in Laconia, that it might bind on knapsacks, forbidding all other arts but that of war, could not make an army of above 30,000 citizens. The agrarian in Oceana, without interruption of traffic, provides us in the fifth part of the youth an annual source or fresh spring of 100,000, besides our provincial auxiliaries, out of which to draw marching armies; and as many elders, not feeble, but men most of them in the flower of their age, and in arms for the defence of our territories. The agrarian in Laconia banished money, this multiplies it; that allowed a matter of twenty or thirty acres to a man, this 2,000 or 3,000; there is no comparison between them. And yet I differ so much from my lord, or his opinion that the agrarian was the ruin of Lacedaemon, that I hold it no less than demonstrable to have been her main support. For if, banishing all other diversions, it could not make an army of above 30,000, then, letting in all other diversions, it must have broken that army. Wherefore Lysander, bringing in the golden spoils of Athens, irrevocably ruined that commonwealth; and is a warning to us, that in giving encouragement to industry, we also remember that covetousness is the root of all evil.

And our agrarian can never be the cause of those seditions threatened by my lord, but is the proper cure of them, as Lucan notes well in the state of Rome before the civil wars, which happened through the want of such an antidote.

"Why then are we mistaken, as if we intended not equal advantages in our commonwealth to either s.e.x, because we would not have women's fortunes consist in that metal which exposes them to cutpurses? If a man cuts my purse I may have him by the heels or by the neck for it; whereas a man may cut a woman's purse, and have her for his pains in fetters. How brutish, and much more than brutish, is that commonwealth which prefers the earth before the fruits of the womb? If the people be her treasure, the staff by which she is sustained and comforted, with what justice can she suffer them, by whom she is most enriched, to be for that cause the most impoverished? And yet we see the gifts of G.o.d, and the bounties of heaven in fruitful families, through this wretched custom of marrying for money, become their insupportable grief and poverty. Nor falls this so heavy upon the lower sort, being better able to shift for themselves, as upon the n.o.bility or gentry. For what avails it in this case, from whence their veins have derived their blood; while they shall see the tallow of a chandler sooner converted into that beauty which is required in a bride? I appeal, whether my Lord Philautus or myself be the advocate of n.o.bility; against which, in the case proposed by me, there would be nothing to hold the balance. And why is a woman, if she may have but 1,500, undone? If she be unmarried, what n.o.bleman allows his daughter in that case a greater revenue than so much money may command?

And if she marry, no n.o.bleman can give his daughter a greater portion than she has. Who is hurt in this case?--nay, who is not benefited? If the agrarian gives us the sweat of our brows without diminution; if it prepares our table; if it makes our cup to overflow, and above all this, in providing for our children, anoints our heads with that oil which takes away the greatest of worldly cares; what man, that is not besotted with a covetousness as vain as endless, can imagine such a const.i.tution to be his poverty? Seeing where no woman can be considerable for her portion, no portion will be considerable with a woman; and so his children will not only find better preferments without his brokage, but more freedom of their own affections. "We are wonderful severe in laws, that they shall not marry without our consent, as if it were care and tenderness over them; but is it not lest we should not have the other 1,000 with this son, or the other 100 a year more in jointure for that daughter? These, when we are crossed in them, are the sins for which we water our couch with tears, but not of penitence. Seeing whereas it is a mischief beyond any that we can do to our enemies, we persist to make nothing of breaking the affection of our children. But there is in this agrarian a homage to pure and spotless love, the consequence whereof I will not give for all your romances. An alderman makes not his daughter a countess till he has given her 20,000, nor a romance a considerable mistress till she be a princess; these are characters of b.a.s.t.a.r.d love.

But if our agrarian excludes ambition and covetousness, we shall at length have the care of our own breed, in which we have been curious as to our dogs and horses. The marriage-bed will be truly legitimate, and the race of the commonwealth not spurious. But (impar magnanimis ausis, imparque dolori) I am hurled from all my hopes by my lord's last a.s.sertion of impossibility, that the root from whence we imagine these fruits should be planted or thrive in this soil. And why? Because of the mixture of estates and variety of tenures. Nevertheless, there is yet extant in the Exchequer an old survey of the whole nation; wherefore such a thing is not impossible. Now if a new survey were taken at the present rates, and the law made that no man should hold hereafter above so much land as is valued therein at 2,000 a year, it would amount to a good and sufficient agrarian. It is true that there would remain some difficulty in the different kind of rents, and that it is a matter requiring not only more leisure than we have, but an authority which may be better able to bow men to a more general consent than is to be wrought out of them by such as are in our capacity. Wherefore as to the manner, it is necessary that we refer it to the Parliament; but as to the matter, they cannot otherwise fix their government upon the right balance.

"I shall conclude with a few words to some parts of the order, which my lord has omitted. As first to the consequences of the agrarian to be settled in Marpesia, which irreparably breaks the aristocracy of that nation; being of such a nature, as standing, it is not possible that you should govern. For while the people of that country are little better than the cattle of the n.o.bility, you must not wonder if, according as these can make their markets with foreign princes, you find those to be driven upon your grounds. And if you be so tender, now you have it in your power, as not to hold a hand upon them that may prevent the slaughter which must otherwise ensue in like cases, the blood will lie at your door. But in holding such a hand upon them, you may settle the agrarian; and in settling the agrarian, you give that people not only liberty, but lands; which makes your protection necessary to their security; and their contribution due to your protection, as to their own safety.

"For the agrarian of Panopea, it allowing such proportions of so good land, men that conceive themselves straitened by this in Oceana, will begin there to let themselves forth, where every citizen will in time have his villa. And there is no question, but the improvement of that country by this means must be far greater than it has been in the best of former times. I have no more to say, but that in those ancient and heroic ages (when men thought that to be necessary which was virtuous) the n.o.bility of Athens, having the people so much engaged in their debt that there remained no other question among these than which of those should be king, no sooner heard Solon speak than they quitted their debts, and restored the commonwealth; which ever after held a solemn and annual feast called the Sisacthia, or Recision, in memory of that action. Nor is this example the phoenix; for at the inst.i.tution by Lycurgus, the n.o.bility having estates (as ours here) in the lands of Laconia, upon no other valuable consideration than the commonwealth proposed by him, threw them up to be parcelled by his agrarian. But now when no man is desired to throw up a farthing of his money, or a shovelful of his earth, and that all we can do is but to make a virtue of necessity, we are disputing whether we should have peace or war.

For peace you cannot have without some government, nor any government without the proper balance. Wherefore if you will not fix this which you have, the rest is blood, for without blood you can bring in no other."

By these speeches made at the inst.i.tution of the agrarian you may perceive what were the grounds of it. The next is--

The fourteenth order, "Const.i.tuting the ballot of Venice, as it is fitted by several alterations, and appointed to every a.s.sembly, to be the constant and only way of giving suffrage in this commonwealth, according to the following scheme."

I shall endeavor by the following figure to demonstrate the manner of the Venetian ballot (a thing as difficult in discourse or writing, as facile in practice) according to the use of it in Oceana. The whole figure represents the Senate, containing, as to the house or form of sitting, a square and a half; the tribunal at the upper end being ascended by four steps. On the uppermost of these sit the magistrates that const.i.tute the signory of the commonwealth, that is to say, A the strategus; B the orator; C the three commissioners of the great seal; D the three commissioners of the Treasury, whereof one, E, exercises for the present the office of a censor at the middle urn, F To the two upper steps of the tribunal answer G, G-G, G, the two long benches next the wall on each side of the house; the outwardmost of which are equal in height to the uppermost step, and the innermost equal in height to the next. Of these four benches consists the first seal; as the second seat consists in like manner of those four benches H, H-H, H, which being next the floor, are equal in height to the two nethermost steps of the throne. So the whole house is distributed into two seats, each consisting of four benches.

This distribution causes not only the greater conveniency; as will be shown, to the senators in the exercise of their function at the ballot, but a greater grace to the aspect of the Senate. In the middle of the outward benches stand I, 12 the chairs of the censors, those being their ordinary places, though upon occasion of the ballot they descend, and sit where they are shown by K, K at each of the outward urns L, L. Those M, M that sit with their tables, and the bowls N, N before them, upon the halfs.p.a.ce or second step of the tribunal from the floor, are the clerks or secretaries of the house. Upon the short seats O, O on the floor (which should have been represented by woolsacks) sit: P, the two tribunes of the horse. Q, the two tribunes of the foot; and R, R-R, R the judges, all which magistrates are a.s.sistants, but have no suffrage.

This posture of the Senate considered, the ballot is performed as follows:

First, whereas the gold b.a.l.l.s are of several suits, and accordingly marked with several letters of the alphabet, a secretary presents a little urn (wherein there is one ball of every suit or mark) to the strategus and the orator; and look what letter the strategus draws, the same and no other is to be used for that time in the middle urn F; the like for the letter drawn by the orator is to be observed for the side urns L, L, that is to say if the strategus drew a ball with an A, all the gold b.a.l.l.s in the middle urn for that day are marked with the letter A; and if the orator drew a B, all the gold b.a.l.l.s in the side urn for that day are marked with the letter B, which done immediately before the ballot, and so the letter unknown to the ballotants, they can use no fraud or juggling; otherwise a man might carry a gold ball in his hand, and seem to have drawn it out of an urn. He that draws a gold ball at any urn, delivers it to the censor or a.s.sessor of that urn, who views the character, and allows accordingly of his lot.

The strategus and the orator having drawn for the letters, the urns are prepared accordingly by one of the commissioners and the two censors.

The preparation of the urns is After this manner. If the Senate be to elect, for example, the list called the tropic of magistrates, which is this:

1. The Lord Strategus;

2. The Lord Orator;

3. The Third Commissioner of the Great Seal;

4. The Third Commissioner of the Treasury;

5. The First Censor;

6. The Second Censor;

this list or schedule consists of six magistracies, and to every magistracy there are to be four compet.i.tors; that is, in all four-and-twenty compet.i.tors proposed to the house. They that are to propose the compet.i.tors are called electors, and no elector can propose above one compet.i.tor: wherefore for the proposing of four-and-twenty compet.i.tors you must have four-and-twenty electors; and whereas the ballot consists of a lot and of a suffrage, the lot is for no other use than for the designation of electors; and he that draws a gold ball at the middle urn is an elector. Now, as to have four-and-twenty compet.i.tors proposed, you must have four-and-twenty electors made, so to have four-and-twenty electors made by lot, you must have four-and-twenty gold b.a.l.l.s in the middle urn; and these (because otherwise it would be no lot) mixed with a competent number of blanks, or silver b.a.l.l.s.

Wherefore to the four-and-twenty gold b.a.l.l.s cast six-and-twenty silver ones, and those (reckoning the blanks with the prizes) make fifty b.a.l.l.s in the middle urn. This done (because no man can come to the middle urn that has not first drawn a gold ball at one of the side urns) and to be sure that the prizes or gold b.a.l.l.s in this urn be all drawn, there must come to it fifty persons; therefore there must be in each of the side urns five-and-twenty gold b.a.l.l.s, which in both come to fifty; and to the end that every senator may have his lot, the gold b.a.l.l.s in the side urns are to be made up with blanks equal to the number of the ballotants at either urn; for example, the house consisting of 300 senators, there must be in each of the side urns 125 blanks and twenty-five prizes, which come in both the side urns to 300 b.a.l.l.s. This is the whole mystery of preparing the urns, which the censors having skill to do accordingly, the rest of the ballot, whether the parties balloting understand it or not must of necessary consequence come right; and they can neither be out, nor fall into any confusion in the exercise of this art.

But the ballot, as I said, is of two parts, lot and suffrage, or the proposition and result. The lot determines who shall propose the compet.i.tors; and the result of the Senate, which of the compet.i.tors shall be the magistrates. The whole, to begin with the lot, proceeds in this manner:

The first secretary with an audible voice reads first the list of the magistrates to be chosen for the day, then the oath for fair election, at which the senators hold up their hands; which done, another secretary presents a little urn to the strategus, in which are four b.a.l.l.s, each of them having one of these four inscriptions: "First seat at the upper end," "First seat at the lower end," "Second seat at the upper end,"

"Second seat at the lower end." And look which of them the strategus draws, the secretary p.r.o.nouncing the inscription with a loud voice, the seat so called comes accordingly to the urns: this in the figure is the second seat at the upper end. The manner of their coming to the side urns is in double files, that being two holes in the cover of each side urn, by which means two may draw at once. The senators therefore S, S-S, S are coming from the upper end of their seats H, H-H, H to the side urns L, L. The senators T T-T are drawing. The senator V has drawn a gold ball at his side urn, and is going to the middle urn F, where the senator W, having done the like at the other side urn, is already drawing. But the senators X, X-X, X having drawn blanks at their side urns, and thrown them into the bowls Y Y standing at the feet of the urns, are marching by the lower end into their seats again; the senator a having done the like at the middle urn, is also throwing his blank into the bowl b and marching to his seat again: for a man by a prize at a side urn gains no more than right to come to the middle urn, where, if he draws a blank, his fortune at the side urn comes to nothing at all; wherefore he also returns to his place. But the senator C has had a prize at the middle urn, where the commissioner, having viewed his ball, and found the mark to be right, he marches up the steps to the seat of the electors, which is the form d set across the tribunal, where he places himself, according as he was drawn, with the other electors e, e, e drawn before him. These are not to look back, but sit with their faces toward the signory or state, till their number amount to that of the magistrates to be that day chosen, which for the present, as was shown, are six: wherefore six electors being made, they are reckoned according as they were drawn: first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, in their order, and the first six that are chosen are the first order of electors.

The first order of electors being made, are conducted by a secretary, with a copy of the list to be chosen, out of the Senate, and into a committee or council-chamber, being neither suffered by the way, nor in their room (till the ballot be ended), to have conference with any but themselves; wherefore the secretary, having given them their oath that they shall make election according to the law and their conscience, delivers them the list, and seats himself at the lower end of the table with his pen and paper, while another secretary keeps the door.

By such time as the first order of electors are thus seated, the second order of electors is drawn, who, with a second copy of the same list, are conducted into another committee-chamber, by other secretaries performing the same office with the former.

The like exactly is done by the third and by the fourth orders (or hands, as the Venetians call them) of electors, by which means you have the four-and-twenty electors divided according to the four copies of the same list, by six, into four hands or orders; and every one of these orders names one compet.i.tor to every magistracy in the list; that is to say, the first elector names to the first magistracy, the second elector to the second magistracy, and so forth. But though the electors, as has been shown, are chosen by mere lot, yet the compet.i.tors by them named are not chosen by any lot, but by the suffrage of the whole order for example, the first elector in the first order proposes a name to be strategus, which name is balloted by himself and the other five electors, and if the name so balloted attain not to above half the suffrages, it is laid aside, and the first elector names another to the same magistracy and so in case this also fails, another, till one he has named, whether it be himself, or some other, has attained to above half the suffrages in the affirmative; and the name so attaining to above half the suffrages in the affirmative is written to the first magistracy in the list by the secretary which being done, the second elector of the first order, names to 'the second magistracy till one of his nomination be chosen to the same. The like is done by the rest of the electors of the first order, till one compet.i.tor be chosen, and written to every magistracy in their list. Now the second, third, and fourth orders of electors doing exactly after the same manner, it comes to pa.s.s that one compet.i.tor to every magistracy being chosen in each order, there be in all four compet.i.tors chosen to every magistracy.

If any controversy arises in an order of electors, one of the censors (these being at this game the groom-porters) is advertised by the secretary who brings him in, and the electors disputing are bound to acquiesce in his sentence. For which cause it is that the censors do not ballot at the urns; the signory also abstains, lest it should deform the house: wherefore the blanks in the side urns are by so many the fewer. And so much for the lot, which is of the greater art but less consequence, because it concerns proposition only: but all (except the tribunes and the judges, which being but a.s.sistants have no suffrage) are to ballot at the result, to which I now come.

The four orders of electors having perfected their lists, the face of the house is changed: for the urns are taken away, and every senator and magistrate is seated in his proper place, saving the electors, who, having given their suffrages already, may not stir out of their chambers till the house have given theirs, and the rest of the ballot be performed; which follows in this manner:

The four lists being presented by the secretaries of each council of electors to the signory, are first read, according to their order, to the house, with an audible voice; and then the compet.i.tors are put to the ballot or suffrage of the whole Senate in this manner: A, A named to be strategus in the first order, whereupon eight ballotins, or pages, such as are expressed by the figures f, f, take eight of the boxes represented, though rudely, by the figures g, g, and go four on the one and four on the other side of the house, that is, one to every bench, signifying "A, A named to be the strategus in the first order.." and every magistrate or senator (beginning by the strategus and the orator first) holds up a little pellet of linen, as the box pa.s.ses, between his finger and his thumb, that men may see he has but one, and then puts it into the same. The box consisting in the inner part of two boxes, being painted on the outside white and green, to distinguish the affirmative from the negative side, is so made that when your hand is in it, no man can see to which of the sides you put the suffrage, nor hear to which it falls, because the pellet being linen, makes no noise. The strategus and the orator having begun, all the rest do the like.