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 God 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 institution 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 title 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 œ2,000 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