poverty, which is the reason that Marius, to whom the care of the
government ought not to have been committed, was the first that
led them into the field;" and his success was accordingly. There
is a mean in things; as exorbitant riches overthrow the balance
of a commonwealth, so extreme poverty cannot hold it, nor is by
any means to be trusted with it. The clause in the order
concerning the prodigal is Athenian, and a very laudable one; for
he that could not live upon his patrimony, if he comes to touch
the public money, makes a commonwealth bankrupt.

The fourth order "distributes the people according to the
places of their habitation, into parishes, hundreds, and tribes."

For except the people be methodically distributed, they
cannot be methodically collected; but the being of a commonwealth
consists in the methodical collection of the people: wherefore
you have the Israelitish divisions into rulers of thousands, of
hundreds, of fifties, and of tens; and of the whole commonwealth
into tribes: the Laconic into oboe, moras, and tribes; the Roman
into tribes, centuries, and classes; and something there must of
necessity be in every government of the like nature, as that in
the late monarchy -- by counties. But this being the only
institution in Oceana, except that of the agrarian, which
required any charge or included any difficulty, engages me to a
more particular description of the manner how it was performed,
as follows:

A thousand surveyors, commissioned and instructed by the Lord
Archon and the Council, being divided into two equal numbers,
each under the inspection of two surveyors-general, were