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 nobility 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.