The Commonwealth of Oceana [78]
the most renowned, or, as the Latin, the most noble of the congregation, whereof by hereditary right they had the leading and judging. The patriarchs, or princes of families, according as they declared their pedigrees, had the like right as to their families; but neither in these nor the former was there any hereditary right to the Sanhedrim: though there be little question but the wise men and understanding, and known among their tribes, which the people took or elected into those or other magistracies, and whom Moses made rulers over them, must have been of these, seeing they could not choose but be the most known among the tribes, and were likeliest by the advantages of education to be the most wise and understanding. "Solon having found the Athenians neither locally nor genealogically, but by their different ways of life, divided into four tribes -- that is, into the soldiery, the tradesmen, the husbandmen, and the goatherds -- instituted a new distribution of them, according to the sense or valuation of their estates, into four classes: the first, second, and third consisting of such as were proprietors in land, distinguished by the rate of their freeholds, with that stamp upon them, which making them capable of adding honor to their riches, that is to say, of the Senate, and all the magistracies, excluded the fourth, being the body of the people, and far greater in number than the former three, from all other right, as to those capacities, except the election of these, who by this means became an hereditary aristocracy or senatorian order of nobility. This was that course which came afterward to be the destruction of Rome, and had now ruined Athens. The nobility, according to the inevitable nature of such a one, having laid the plot how to divest the people of the result, and so to draw the whole power of the commonwealth to themselves; which in all likelihood they had done, if the people, coming by mere chance to be victorious in the battle of Plataea, and famous for defending Greece against the Persians, had not returned with such courage as irresistibly broke the classes, to which of old they had borne a white tooth, brought the nobility to equal terms, and the Senate with the magistracies to be common to both; the magistracies by suffrage, and the Senate (which was the mischief of it, as I shall show anon in that constitution) by lot only." The Lacedaemonians were in the manner, and for the same cause with the Venetians at this day, no other than a nobility even according to the definition given of nobility by Machiavel; for they neither exercised any trade, nor labored their lands or lots, which was done by their helots: wherefore some nobility may be far from pernicious in a commonwealth by Machiavel's own testimony, who is an admirer of this, though the servants thereof were more in number than the citizens. To these servants I hold the answer of Lycurgus --when he bade him who asked why he did not admit the people to the government of his commonwealth, to go home and admit his servants to the government of his family-to relate: for neither were the Lacedaemonians servants, nor, further, capable of the government, unless, whereas the congregation had the result, be should have given them the debate also; every one of these that attained to sixty years of age, and the major vote of the congregation, being equally capable of the Senate. "The nobility of Rome, and their capacity of the Senate, I have already described by that of Athens before the battle of Plataea, saving only that the Athenian was never eligible into the Senate without the suffrage of the people till the introduction of the lot, but the Roman nobility ever: for the patricians were elected into the Senate by the kings; by the consuls, or the censors, or if a plebeian happened to be conscribed, he and his posterity became patricians. Nor, though the people had many disputes with the nobility, did this ever come in controversy, which, if there had been nothing else, might in my judgment have been enough to overturn that commonwealth.