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 nobility 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 institution by Lycurgus, the nobility 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