of the tribunes a muster of the people at a set time and place:
and the tribunes or any two of them having mustered the people
accordingly, the proposers shall propose the sense or decree of
the Senate by clauses to the people. And that which is proposed
by the authority of the Senate, and resolved by the command of
the people, is the law of Oceana." To this order, implicitly
containing the sum very near of the whole civil part of the
commonwealth, my Lord Archon spoke thus in council:

"MY DEAR LORDS:

"There is a saying, that a man must cut his coat according to
his cloth. When I consider what God has allowed or furnished to
our present work, I am amazed. You would have a popular
government; he has weighed it to you in the present balance, as I
may say, to a drachm; you have no more to do but to fix it. For
the superstructures of such a government they require a good
aristocracy: and you have, or have had a nobility or gentry the
best studied, and the best writers, at least next that of Italy,
in the whole world; nor have they been inferior, when so
exercised, in the leading of armies. But the people are the main
body of a commonwealth; show me from the treasuries of the snow
(as it is in Job) to the burning zone a people whose shoulder so
universally and so exactly fits the corselet. Nevertheless, it
were convenient to be well provided with auxiliaries. There is
Marpesia, through her fruitfulness, inexhaustible of men, and men
through her barrenness not only enured to hardship, but in your
arms. It may be said that Venice, excepting only that she takes
not in the people, is the most incomparable situation of a
commonwealth. You are Venice, taking in your people and your