The Commonwealth of Oceana Part 8

The ballotins having thus gathered the suffrages, bring them before the signory, in whose presence the outward boxes being opened, they take out the inner boxes, whereof the affirmative is white, and the negative green, and pour the white in the bowl N on the right hand, which is white also, and the green into the bowl N on the left, which is also green. These bowls or basins (better represented at the lower end of the figure by h, i) being upon this occasion set before the tables of the secretaries at the upper end N, N, the white on the right hand, and the green on the left, the secretaries on each side number the b.a.l.l.s, by which, if they find that the affirmatives amount not to above one-half, they write not the name that was balloted, but if they amount to above one-half, they write it, adding the number of above half the suffrages to which it attained. The first name being written, or laid aside, the next that is put is BB named to be strategus in the second order; the third CC, named to be strategus in the third order; the fourth DD, named to be strategus in the fourth order and he of these four compet.i.tors that has most above half in the affirmative, is the magistrate; or if none of them attain to above half, the nomination for that magistracy is to be repeated by such new electors as shall be chosen at the next ballot. And so, as is exemplified in the first magistracy, proceeds the ballot of the rest; first in the first, then in the second, and so in the third and fourth orders.

Now whereas it may happen that AA, for example, being named strategus in the first order, may also be named to the same or some one or more other magistracies in one or more of the other orders; his name is first balloted where it is first written, that is to the more worthy magistracy, whereof if he misses, he is balloted as it comes in course for the next, and so for the rest, if he misses of that, as often as he is named.

And because to be named twice, or oftener, whether to the same or some other magistracy, is the stronger recommendation, the note must not fail to be given upon the name, at the proposition in this manner: AA named to be strategus in the first, and in the second order, or AA named to be strategus in the first and the third, in the first and the fourth, etc.

But if he be named to the same magistracy in the first, second, third, and fourth orders, he can have no compet.i.tor; wherefore attaining to above half the suffrages, he is the magistrate. Or thus: AA named to be strategus in the first, to be censor in the second, to be orator in the third, and to be commissioner of the seal in the fourth order, or the like in more or fewer orders, in which cases if he misses of the first magistracy, he is balloted to the second; if he misses of the second, to the third; and if he misses of the third, to the fourth.

The ballot not finished before sunset, though the election of the magistrates already chosen be good, voids the election of such compet.i.tors as being chosen are not yet furnished with magistracies, as if they had never been named (for this is no juggling-box, but an art that must see the sun), and the ballot for the remaining magistracies is to be repeated the next day by new orders of electors, and such compet.i.tors as by them shall be elected. And so in the like manner, if of all the names proposed to the same magistracy, no one of them attains to above half the suffrages in the affirmative.

The senatorian ballot of Oceana being thus described, those of the parish, of the hundred, and of the tribe, being so little different, that in this they are all contained, and by this may be easily understood, are yet fully described, and made plain enough before in the fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth orders.

This, therefore, is the general order, whence those branches of the ballot, some whereof you have already seen, are derived; which, with those that follow, were all read and debated in this place at the inst.i.tution. When my Lord Epimonus de Garrula, being one of the councillors, and having no further patience (though the rulers were composed by the agent of this commonwealth, residing for that purpose at Venice) than to hear the direction for the parishes, stood up and made way for himself in this manner:

"MAY IT PLEASE YOUR HIGHNESS, MY LORD ARCHON:

"Under correction of Mr. Peregrin, Spy, our very learned agent and intelligencer, I have seen the world a little, Venice, and (as gentlemen are permitted to do) the great Council balloting. And truly I must needs say, that it is for a dumb show the goodliest that I ever beheld with my eyes. You should have some would take it ill, as if the n.o.ble Venetians thought themselves too good to speak to strangers, but they observed them not so narrowly. The truth is, they have nothing to say to their acquaintance; or men that are in council sure would have tongues: for a council, and not a word spoken in it, is a contradiction. But there is such a pudder with their marching and countermarching, as, though never a one of them draw a sword, you would think they were training; which till I found that they did it only to entertain strangers, I came from among them as wise as I went thither But in the Parliament of Oceana you had no b.a.l.l.s nor dancing, but sober conversation; a man might know and be known, show his parts, and improve them. And now if you take the advice of this same fellow, you will spoil all with his whimsies. Mr.

Speaker--cry you mercy, my Lord Archon, I mean--set the wisest man of your house in the great Council of Venice, and you will not know him from a fool. Whereas nothing is more certain than that flat and dull fellows in the judgment of all such as used to keep company with them before, upon election into our house, have immediately chitted like barley in the vat, where it acquires a new spirit, and flowed forth into language, that I am as confident as I am here, if there were not such as delight to abuse us, is far better than Tully's; or, let anybody but translate one of his orations, and speak it in the house, and see if everybody do not laugh at him.

"This is a great matter, Mr. Speaker; they do not cant it with your book-learning, your orbs, your centres, your prime magnitudes, and your nebulones, things I profess that would make a sober man run stark mad to hear them; while we, who should be considering the honor of our country and that it goes now or never upon our hand, whether it shall be ridiculous to all the world, are going to nine-holes or trow madam for our business, like your dumb Venetian, whom this same Sir Politic your resident, that never saw him do anything but make faces, would insinuate to you, at this distance, to have the only knack of state. Whereas if you should take the pains, as I have done, to look a little nearer, you would find these same wonderful things to be nothing else but mere natural fopperies, or capriccios as they call them in Italian, even of the meanest, of that nation. For, put the case you be travelling in Italy, ask your contadino, that is, the next country-fellow you meet, some question, and presently he ballots you an answer with a nod, which is affirmative; or a shake with his head, which is the negative box; or a shrug with his shoulder, which is the bossolo di non sinceri. Good!

You will admire Sandys for telling you, that grotta di cane is a miracle: and I shall be laughed at, for a.s.suring you, that it is nothing else but such a damp (continued by the neighborhood of certain sulphur mines) as through accidental heat does sometimes happen in our coalpits.

But ingrat.i.tude must not discourage an honest man from doing good.

There is not, I say, such a tongue-tied generation under heaven as your Italian, that you should not wonder if he makes signs. But our people must have something in their diurnals; we must ever and anon be telling them our minds; or if we be at it when we raise taxes, like those gentlemen with the finger and the thumb, they will swear that we are cutpurses. Come, I know what I have heard them say, when some men had money that wrought hard enough for it; and do you conceive they will be better pleased when they shall be told that upon like occasions you are at mumchance or stool-ball?

"I do not speak for myself; for though I shall always acknowledge that I got more by one year's sitting in the house than by my three years'

travels, it was not of that kind. But I hate that this same Spy, for pretending to have played at billiards with the most serene Commonwealth of Venice, should make such fools of us here, when I know that he must have had his intelligence from some corn-cutter upon the Rialto; for a n.o.ble Venetian would be hanged if he should keep such a fellow company.

And yet if I do not think he has made you all dote, never trust me, my Lord Archon is sometimes in such strange raptures. Well, good my lord, let me be heard as well as your apple squire. Venice has fresh blood in her cheeks, I must confess, yet she is but an old lady. N or has he picked her cabinet; these he sends you are none of her receipts, I can a.s.sure you; he bought them for a Julio at St. Mark's of a mountebank.

She has no other wash, upon my knowledge, for that same envied complexion of hers but her marshes, being a little better scented, saving your presence, than a chamber-pot. My lords, I know what I say, but you will never have done with it, that neither the great Turk, nor any of those little Turks her neighbors, have been able to spoil her!

Why you may as well wonder that weasels do not suck eggs in swans'

nests. Do you think that it has lain in the devotion of her beads; which you that have puked so much at popery, are now at length resolved shall consecrate M. Parson, and be dropped by every one of his congregation, while those same whimsical intelligences your surveyors (you will break my heart) give the turn to your primum mobile! And so I think they will; (for you will find that money is the primum mobile) and they will turn you thus out of some 300,000 or 400,000: a pretty sum for urns and b.a.l.l.s, for boxes and pills, which these same quacksalvers are to administer to the parishes; and for what disease I marvel! Or how does it work? Out comes a constable, an overseer, and a churchwarden! Mr.

Speaker, I am amazed!"

Never was there goose so stuck with lard as my Lord Epimonus's speech with laughter, the Archon having much ado to recover himself in such a manner as might enable him to return these thanks:

"In your whole lives, my lords, were you never entertained with so much ingenuity, my Lord Epimonus having at once mended all the faults of travellers. For, first, whereas they are abominable liars, he has not told you (except some malicious body has misinformed him concerning poor Spy) one syllable of falsehood. And, secondly, whereas they never fail to give the upper hand in all their discourses to foreign nations, still jostling their own into the kennel, he bears an honor to his country that will not dissolve in Cephalonia, nor be corrupted with figs and melons, which I can a.s.sure you is an ordinary obligation; and therefore hold it a matter of public concern that we be to no occasion of quenching my lord's affections, nor is there any such great matter between us, but, in my opinion, might be easily reconciled, for though that which my lord gained by sitting in the house, I steadfastly believe, as he can affirm, was got fairly yet dare I not, nor do I think, that upon consideration he will promise for other gamesters, especially when they were at it so high, as he intimates not only to have been in use, but to be like enough to come about again. Wherefore say I, let them throw with boxes, for unless we will be below the politics of an ordinary, there is no such bar to cogging, it is known to his lords.h.i.+p that our game is most at a throw, and that every cast of our dice is in our suffrages, nor will he deny that partiality in a suffrage is downright cogging.

"If the Venetian boxes be the most sovereign of all remedies against this same cogging, is it not a strange thing that they should be thrown first into the fire by a fair gamester? Men are naturally subject to all kinds of pa.s.sions; some you have that are not able to withstand the brow of an enemy, and others that make nothing of this, are less proof against that of a friend. So that if your suffrage be barefaced, I dare say you shall not have one fair cast in twenty. But whatever a man's fortune be at the box, he neither knows whom to thank, nor whom to challenge. Wherefore (that my lord may have a charitable opinion of the choice affection which I confess to have, above all other beauties, for that of incomparable Venice) there is in this way of suffrage no less than a demonstration that it is the most pure, and the purity of the suffrage in a popular government is the health, if not the life of it, seeing the soul is not otherwise breathed into the sovereign power than by the suffrage of the people. Wherefore no wonder if Postellus be of opinion that this use of the ball is the very same with that of the bean in Athens, or that others, by the text concerning Eldad and Medad, derive it from the Commonwealth of Israel. There is another thing, though not so material to us, that my lord will 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 const.i.tution, 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 circ.u.mferences 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 const.i.tute the Senate; the deputies, the prerogative tribe, commonly called the people; and the Senate and people const.i.tute 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 s.p.a.ce 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 strategus, the mace before the orator, a mace with the seal before the commissioners of the chancery, the like with the purse before the commissioners of the treasury, and a silver wand, like those in use with the universities, before each of the censors, being chancellors of the same. These, with the knights, in all 300, a.s.semble in the house or hall of the Senate.

The house or hall of the Senate being situated in the Pantheon or palace of justice, is a room consisting of a square and a half. In the middle of the lower end is the door, at the upper end hangs a rich state overshadowing the greater part of a large throne, or half-pace of two stages; the first ascended by two steps from the floor, and the second about the middle rising two steps higher. Upon this stand two chairs, in that on the right hand sits the strategus, in the other the orator adorned with scarlet robes, after the fas.h.i.+on that was used by the dukes in the aristocracy. At the right end of the upper stage stand three chairs, in which the three commissioners of the seal are placed; and at the other end sit the three commissioners of the treasury, every one in a robe or habit like that of the earls. Of these magistrates of this upper stage consists the signory. At either end of the lower stage stands a little table, to which the secretaries of the Senate are set with their tufted sleeves in the habit of civil lawyers. To the four steps, whereby the two stages of the throne are ascended, answer four long benches, which successively deriving from every one of the steps, continue their respective height, and extend themselves by the side walls toward the lower end of the house, every bench being divided by numeral characters into the thirty-seven parts or places. Upon the upper benches sit the censors in the robes of barons; the first in the middle of the right hand bench, and the second directly opposite to him on the other side. Upon the rest of the benches sit the knights, who, if they be called to the urns, distributing themselves by the figures, come in equal files, either by the first seat, which consists of the two upper benches on either side; or by the second seat, consisting of the two lower benches on either side, beginning also at the upper or at the lower ends of the same, according to the lot whereby they are called; for which end the benches are open, and ascended at either end with easy stairs and large pa.s.sages.

The rest of the ballot is conformable to that of the tribe; the censors of the house sitting at the side urn, and the youngest magistrate of the signory at the middle, the urns being placed before the throne, and prepared according to the number of the magistrates to be at that time chosen by the rules already given to the censors of the tribes. But before the benches of the knights on either side stands one being shorter, and at the upper end of this sit the two tribunes of the horse.

At the upper end of the other the two tribunes of the foot in their arms, the rest of the benches being covered by the judges of the land in their robes. But these magistrates have no suffrage, nor the tribunes, though they derive their presence in the Senate from the Romans, nor the judges, though they derive theirs from the ancient Senate of Oceana.

Every Monday this a.s.sembly sits of course; at other times, if there be occasion, any magistrate of the house, by giving order for the bell, or by his lictor or ensign-bearer, calls a senate. And every magistrate or knight during his session has the t.i.tle, place, and honor of a duke, earl, baron, or knight respectively And every one that has borne the same magistracy by his third session, has his respective place and t.i.tle during the term of his life, which is all the honor conferred by this commonwealth, except upon the master of the ceremonies, the master of the horse, and the king of the heralds, who are knights by their places.

And thus you have the face of the Senate, in which there is scarce any feature that is not Roman or Venetian; nor do the horns of the crescent extend themselves much unlike those of the Sanhedrim, on either hand of the prince, and of the father of that Senate. But upon beauty, in which every man has his fancy, we will not otherwise philosophize than to remember that there is something more than decency in the robe of a judge, that would not be well spared from the bench; and that the gravest magistrate to whom you can commit the sword of justice, will find a quickness in the spurs of honor, which, if they be not laid to virtue, will lay themselves to that which may rout a commonwealth.

To come from the face of the Senate to the const.i.tution and use of the parts: it is contained in the peculiar orders. And the orders which are peculiar to the Senate, are either of election or instruction.

Elections in the Senate are of three sorts: annual, biennial, and extraordinary.

Annual elections are performed by the schedule called the tropic; and the tropic consists of two parts: the one containing the magistrates, and the other the councils to be yearly elected. The schedule or tropic of the magistrates is as follows in--

The fifteenth order requiring, "That upon every Monday next ensuing the last of March, the knights of the annual galaxies taking their places in the Senate, be called the third region of the same; and that the house having dismissed the first region, and received the third, proceed to election of the magistrates contained in the first part of the tropic, by the ensuing schedule:

The lord strategus, The lord orator, the first censor, The second censor,

Annual magistrates,

The third commissioner of the seal, The third commissioner of the Treasury,

Triennal magistrates.

"The annual magistrates (provided that no one man bears above one of those honors during the term of one session) may be elected out of any region. But the triennial magistrates may not be elected out of any other than the third region only, lest the term of their session expire before that of their honor; and (it being unlawful for a man to bear magistracy any longer than he is thereto qualified by the election of the people) cause a fraction in the rotation of this commonwealth.

"The strategus is first president of the Senate, and general of the army, if it be commanded to march; in which case there shall be a second strategus elected to be first president of the Senate, and general of the second army, and if this also be commanded to march, a third strategus s.h.i.+ll be chosen, and so on, as long as the commonwealth sends forth armies.

"The lord orator is the second and more peculiar president of the Senate to whom it appertains to keep the house to orders.

"The censors, whereof the first, by consequence of his election, is chancellor of the University of Clio, and the second of that of Calliope, are presidents of the Council for Religion and magistrates, to whom it belongs to keep the house to the order of the ballot. They are also inquisitors into the ways and means of acquiring magistracy, and have power to punish indirect proceedings in the same, by removing a knight or magistrate out of the house, under appeal to the Senate.

"The commissioners of the seal being three, whereof the third is annually chosen out of the third region, are judges in chancery.

"The commissioners of the Treasury being three, whereof the third is annually chosen out of the third region, are judges in the exchequer, and every magistrate of this schedule has right to propose to the Senate.

"But the strategus with the six commissioners is the signory of this commonwealth, having right of session and suffrage in every council of the Senate, and power either jointly or severally to propose in all or any of them."

I have little in this order to observe and prove but that the strategus is the same honor both in name and thing that was borne, among others, by Philopemen and Aratus in the Commonwealth of the Achaeans; the like having been in use also with the AEtolians. The orator, called otherwise the speaker, is, with small alteration, the same that had been of former use in this nation. These two, if you will, may be compared to the consuls in Rome, or the suffetes in Carthage, for their magistracy is scarce different.

The censors derive their power of removing a senator from those of Rome, the government of the ballot from those of Venice, and that of animadversion upon the ambitious, or canva.s.s for magistracy, from both.

The signory, with the whole right and use of that magistracy to be hereafter more fully explained, is almost purely Venetian.

The second part of the tropic is directed by--

The sixteenth order" Whereby the const.i.tution of the councils being four; that is to say, the Council of State, the Council of War, the Council of Religion, and the Council of Trade, is rendered conformable in their revolutions to that of the Senate. As: First, by the annual election of five knights out of the first region of the Senate into the Council of State, consisting of fifteen knights, five in every region.

Secondly, by the annual election of three knights out of the third region of the Council of State, to be proposed by the provosts, and elected by that council, into the Council of War, consisting of nine knights, three in every region, not excluded by this election from remaining members also of the Council of State. The four tribunes of the people have right of session and suffrage in the Council of War.

Thirdly, by the annual election of four knights out of the third region of the Senate into the Council of Religion, consisting of twelve knights, four in every region; of this council the censors are presidents. Fourthly, by the annual election of four knights out of the third region of the Senate into the Council of Trade, consisting of twelve knights, four in every region. And each region, in every one of these councils thus const.i.tuted, shall weekly and interchangeably elect one provost whose magistracy shall continue for one week; nor shall he be re-elected into the same till every knight of that region in the same council has once borne the same magistracy. And the provosts being one in every region, three in every council, and twelve in all, beside their other capacities, shall a.s.semble and be a council, or rather an Academy apart, to certain ends and purposes to be hereafter further explained with those of the rest of the councils."

This order is of no other use than the frame and turn of the councils, and yet of no small one; for in motion consists life, and the motion of a commonwealth will never be current unless it be circular. Men that, like my Lord Epimonus, not enduring the resemblance of this kind of government to orbs and spheres, fall on physicking and purging it, do no more than is necessary; for if it be not in rotation both as to persons and things, it will be very sick. The people of Rome, as to persons, if they had not been taken up by the wheel of magistracy, had overturned the chariot of the Senate. And those of Lacedaemon, as to things, had not been so quiet when the Senate trashed their business, by encroaching upon the result, if by the inst.i.tution of the ephors they had not brought it about again. So that if you allow not a commonwealth her rotation, in which consists her equality, you reduce her to a party, and then it is necessary that you be physicians indeed, or rather farriers; for you will have strong patients, and such as must be haltered and cast, or yourselves may need bone-setters. Wherefore the councils of this commonwealth, both in regard of their elections, and, as will be shown, of their affairs, are uniform with the Senate in their revolutions; not as whirlpits to swallow, but to bite, and with the screws of their rotation to hold and turn a business (like the vice of a smith) to the hand of the workman. Without engines of which nature it is not possible for the Senate, much less for the people, to be perfect artificers in a political capacity. But I shall not hold you longer from--

The seventeenth order, "Directing biennial elections, or the const.i.tution of the orb of amba.s.sador-in-ordinary, consisting of four residences, the revolution whereof is performed in eight years, and preserved through the election of one amba.s.sador in two years by the ballot of the Senate to repair to the Court of France, and reside there for the term of two years; and the term of two years being expired, to remove from thence to the Court of Spain, there to continue for the s.p.a.ce of two years, and thence to remove to the State of Venice, and after two years' residence in that city to conclude with his residence at Constantinople for a like term of time, and so to return. A knight of the Senate, or a deputy of the prerogative, may not be elected amba.s.sador-in-ordinary, because a knight or deputy so chosen must either lose his session, which would cause an unevenness in the motion of this commonwealth, or acc.u.mulate magistracy, which agrees not with equality of the same. Nor may any man be elected into this capacity that is above five-and-thirty years of age, lest the commonwealth lose the charge of his education, by being deprived at his return of the fruit of it, or else enjoy it not long through the defects of nature."

This order is the perspective of the commonwealth, whereby she foresees danger; or the traffic, whereby she receives every two years the return of a statesman enriched with eight years' experience from the prime marts of negotiation in Europe. And so much for the elections in the Senate that are ordinary; such as are extraordinary follow in--

The eighteenth order, "Appointing all elections upon emergent occasions, except that of the dictator, to be made by the scrutiny, or that kind of election whereby a council comes to be a fifth order of electors.

For example, if there be occasion of an amba.s.sador-extraordinary, the provosts of the Council of State, or any two of them, shall propose to the same, till one compet.i.tor be chosen by that council; and the council having chosen a compet.i.tor, shall bring his name into the Senate, which in the usual way shall choose four more compet.i.tors to the same magistracy; and put them, with the compet.i.tor of the council, to the ballot of the house, by which he of the five that is chosen is said to be elected by the scrutiny of the Council of State. A vice-admiral, a polemarch, or field officer, shall be elected after the same manner, by the scrutiny of the Council of War. A judge or sergeant-at-law, by the scrutiny of the commissioners of the seal. A baron, or considerable officer of the Exchequer, by the scrutiny of the commissioners of the Treasury: Men in magistracy, or out of it, are equally capable of election by the scrutiny; but a magistrate or officer elected by the scrutiny to a military employment, if he be neither a knight of the Senate nor a deputy of the prerogative, ought to have his office confirmed by the prerogative, because the militia in a commonwealth, where the people are sovereign, is not lawful to be touched injussu populi.