nature; and this is no other than the derivation of power from
fathers of families as the natural root of a commonwealth. And
for experience, if it be otherwise in that of Holland, I know no
other example of the like kind. in Israel, the sovereign power
came clearly from the natural root, the elders of the whole
people; and Rome was born, Comitiis curiatis, in her parochial
congregations, out of which Romulus first raised her Senate, then
all the rest of the orders of that commonwealth, which rose so
high: for the depth of a commonwealth is the just height of it-

"She raises up her head unto the skies,

Near as her root unto the centre lies."

And if the Commonwealth of Rome was born of thirty parishes,
this of Oceana was born of 10,000. But whereas mention in the
birth of this is made of an equestrian order, it may startle such
as know that the division of the people of Rome, at the
institution of that commonwealth into orders, was the occasion of
its ruin. The distinction of the patrician as a hereditary order
from the very institution, engrossing all the magistracies, was
indeed the destruction of Rome; but to a knight or one of the
equestrian order, says Horace,

"Si quadringentis sex septem millia desunt,

Plebs eris."

By which it should seem that this order was not otherwise
hereditary than a man's estate, nor did it give any claim to