excuse me if I be not willing to yield, which is, that Venice
subsists only by her situation. it is true that a man in time of
war may be more secure from his enemies by being in a citadel,
but not from his diseases; wherefore the first cause, if he lives
long, is his good constitution, without which his citadel were to
little purpose, and it is not otherwise with Venice."

With this speech of the Archon I conclude the proof of the
agrarian and the ballot, being the fundamental laws of this
commonwealth, and come now from the centre to the circumferences
or orbs, whereof some have been already shown; as how the
parishes annually pour themselves into the hundreds, the hundreds
into the tribes, and the tribes into the galaxies; the annual
galaxy of every tribe consisting of two knights and seven
deputies, whereof the knights constitute the Senate; the
deputies, the prerogative tribe, commonly called the people; and
the Senate and people constitute the sovereign power or
Parliament of Oceana. Whereof to show what the Parliament is, I
must first open the Senate, and then the prerogative tribe.

To begin with the Senate, of which (as a man is differently
represented by a picture drawer and by an anatomist) I shall
first discover the face or aspect, and then the parts, with the
use of them. Every Monday morning in the summer at seven, and in
the winter at eight, the great bell in the clock-house at the
Pantheon begins, and continues ringing for the space of one hour;
in which time the magistrates of the Senate, being attended
according to their quality, with a respective number of the
ballotins, doorkeepers, and messengers, and having the ensigns of
their magistracies borne before them, as the sword before the