The Commonwealth of Oceana | Page 8

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their discipline, arms, and courage than from their natural health,
beauty, or strength, in regard that a people conquered may have more
of natural strength, beauty, and health, and yet find little remedy. The
principles of government then are in the goods of the mind, or in the
goods of fortune. To the goods of the mind answers authority; to the
goods of fortune, power or empire. Wherefore Leviathan, though he be
right where he says that "riches are power," is mistaken where he says
that "prudence, or the reputation of prudence, is power;" for the
learning or prudence of a man is no more power than the learning or
prudence of a book or author, which is properly authority. A learned
writer may have authority though he has no power; and a foolish
magistrate may have power, though he has otherwise no esteem or
authority. The difference of these two is observed by Livy in Evander,
of whom he says that he governed rather by the authority of others than
by his own power.
To begin with riches, in regard that men are hung upon these, not of
choice as upon the other, but of necessity and by the teeth; forasmuch
as he who wants bread is his servant that will feed him, if a man thus
feeds a whole people, they are under his empire.
Empire is of two kinds, domestic and national, or foreign and
provincial.
Domestic empire is founded upon dominion. Dominion is property, real
or personal; that is to say, in lands, or in money and goods.
Lands, or the parts and parcels of a territory, are held by the proprietor
or proprietors, lord or lords of it, in some proportion; and such (except
it be in a city that has little or no land, and whose revenue is in trade) as
is the proportion or balance of dominion or property in land, such is the
nature of the empire.
If one man be sole landlord of a territory, or overbalance the people, for
example, three parts in four, he is grand seignior; for so the Turk is
called from his property, and his empire is absolute monarchy.
If the few or a nobility, or a nobility with the clergy, be landlords, or

overbalance the people to the like proportion, it makes the Gothic
balance (to be shown at large in the second part of this discourse), and
the empire is mixed monarchy, as that of Spain, Poland, and late of
Oceana.
And if the whole people be landlords, or hold the lands so divided
among them that no one man, or number of men, within the compass of
the few or aristocracy, overbalance them, the empire (without the
interposition of force) is a commonwealth.
If force be interposed in any of these three cases, it must either frame
the government to the foundation, or the foundation to the government;
or holding the government not according to the balance, it is not natural,
but violent; and therefore if it be at the devotion of a prince, it is
tyranny; if at the devotion of the few, oligarchy; or if in the power of
the people, anarchy: Each of which confusions, the balance standing
otherwise, is but of short continuance, because against the nature of the
balance, which, not destroyed, destroys that which opposes it.
But there be certain other confusions, which, being rooted in the
balance, are of longer continuance, and of worse consequence; as, first,
where a nobility holds half the property, or about that proportion, and
the people the other half; in which case, without altering the balance
there is no remedy but the one must eat out the other, as the people did
the nobility in Athens, and the nobility the people in Rome. Secondly,
when a prince holds about half the dominion, and the people the other
half (which was the case of the Roman emperors, planted partly upon
their military colonies and partly upon the Senate and the people), the
government becomes a very shambles, both of the princes and the
people. Somewhat of this nature are certain governments at this day,
which are said to subsist by confusion. In this case, to fix the balance is
to entail misery; but in the three former, not to fix it is to lose the
government. Wherefore it being unlawful in Turkey that any should
possess land but the Grand Seignior, the balance is fixed by the law,
and that empire firm. Nor, though the kings often sell was the throne of
Oceana known to shake, until the statute of alienations broke the pillars,
by giving way to the nobility to sell their estates. While Lacedaemon

held to the division of land made by Lycurgus, it was immovable; but,
breaking that, could stand no