The Commonwealth of Oceana [96]
of the horse) annually elected out of every tribe of Oceana; which being fifty, amounts to 150 horse and 200 foot. And the prerogative consisting of three of these lists, consists of 450 horse and 600 foot, besides those of the provinces to be hereafter mentioned; by which means the overbalance in the suffrage remaining to the foot by 150 votes, you have to the support of a true and natural aristocracy the deepest root of a democracy that has been ever planted. "Wherefore there is nothing in art or nature better qualified for the result than this assembly. it is noted out of Cicero by Machiavel, 'That the people, though they are not so prone to find out truth of themselves as to follow custom or run into error yet if they be shown truth, they not only acknowledge and embrace it very suddenly, but are the most constant and faithful guardians and conservators of it.' it is your duty and office, whereto you are also qualified by the orders of this commonwealth, to have the people as you have your hawks and greyhounds, in leashes and slips, to range the fields and beat the bushes for them, for they are of a nature that is never good at this sport, but when you spring or start their proper quarry. Think not that they will stand to ask you what it is, or less know it than your hawks and greyhounds do theirs; but presently make such a flight or course, that a huntsman may as well undertake to run with his dogs, or a falconer to fly with his hawk, as an aristocracy at this game to compare with the people. The people of Rome were possessed of no less a prey than the empire of the world, when the nobility turned tails, and perched among daws upon the tower of monarchy. For though they did not all of them intend the thing, they would none of them endure the remedy, which was the agrarian. "But the prerogative tribe has not only the result, but is the supreme judicature, and the ultimate appeal in this commonwealth. For the popular government that makes account to be of any standing, must make sure in the first place of the appeal to the people. As an estate in trust becomes a man's own if he be not answerable for it, so the power of a magistracy not accountable to the people, from whom it was received, becoming of private use, the commonwealth loses her liberty Wherefore the right of supreme judicature in the people (Without which there can be no such thing as popular government) is confirmed by the constant practice of all commonwealths; as that of Israel in the cases of Achan, and of the tribe of Benjamin, adjudged by the congregation. "The dicasterian, or court called the heliaia in Athens, which (the comitia of that commonwealth consisting of the whole people, and so being too numerous to be a judicatory) was constituted sometimes of 500, at others of 1,000, or, according to the greatness of the cause, of 1,500, elected by the lot out of the whole body of the people, had, with the nine Archons that were presidents, the cognizance of such causes as were of highest importance in that State. The five ephors in Lacedaemon, which were popular magistrates, might question their kings, as appears by the cases of Pausanias, and of Agis, who being upon his trial in this court, was cried to by his mother to appeal to the people, as Plutarch has it in his life. The tribunes of the people of Rome (like, in the nature of their magistracy, and for some time in number, to the ephors, as being, according to Halicarnassus and Plutarch, instituted in imitation of them) had power to summon any man, his magistracy at least being expired (for from the Dictator there lay no appeal) to answer for himself to the people. As in the case of Coriolanus, who was going about to force the people, by withholding corn from them in a famine, to relinquish the magistracy of the tribunes, in that of Spurius Cassius for affecting tyranny, of Marcus Sergius for running away at Veii, of Caius Lucretius for spoiling his province, of Junius Silanus for making war without a command from the people against the Cimbri, with divers others. And the crimes of this