The Commonwealth of Oceana | Page 9

longer. This kind of law fixing the
balance in lands is called agrarian, and was first introduced by God
himself, who divided the land of Canaan to his people by lots, and is of
such virtue that wherever it has held, that government has not altered,
except by consent; as in that unparalleled example of the people of
Israel, when being in liberty they would needs choose a king. But
without an agrarian law, government, whether monarchical,
aristocratical, or popular, has no long lease.
As for dominion, personal or in money, it may now and then stir up a
Melius or a Manlius, which, if the Commonwealth be not provided
with some kind of dictatorian power, may be dangerous, though it has
been seldom or never successful; because to property producing empire,
it is required that it should have some certain root or foothold, which,
except in land, it cannot have, being otherwise as it were upon the
wing.
Nevertheless, in such cities as subsist mostly by trade, and have little or
no land, as Holland and Genoa, the balance of treasure may be equal to
that of land in the cases mentioned.
But Leviathan, though he seems to skew at antiquity, following his
furious master Carneades, has caught hold of the public sword, to
which he reduces all manner and matter of government; as, where he
affirms this opinion (that any monarch receives his power by covenant;
that is to say, upon conditions)" to proceed from the not understanding
this easy truth, that covenants being but words and breath, have no
power to oblige, contain, constrain, or protect any man, but what they
have from the public sword." But as he said of the law, that without this
sword it is but paper, so he might have thought of this sword, that
without a hand it is but cold iron. The hand which holds this sword is
the militia of a nation; and the militia of a nation is either an army in
the field, or ready for the field upon occasion. But an army is a beast
that has a great belly, and must be fed: wherefore this will come to
what pastures you have, and what pastures you have will come to the
balance of property, without which the public sword is but a name or

mere spitfrog. Wherefore, to set that which Leviathan says of arms and
of contracts a little straighter, he that can graze this beast with the great
belly, as the Turk does his Timariots, may well deride him that
imagines he received his power by covenant, or is obliged to any such
toy. It being in this case only that covenants are but words and breath.
But if the property of the nobility, stocked with their tenants and
retainers, be the pasture of that beast, the ox knows his master's crib;
and it is impossible for a king in such a constitution to reign otherwise
than by covenant; or if he break it, it is words that come to blows.
"But," says he, "when an assembly of men is made sovereign, then no
man imagines any such covenant to have part in the institution." But
what was that by Publicola of appeal to the people, or that whereby the
people had their tribunes? "Fie," says he, "nobody is so dull as to say
that the people of Rome made a covenant with the Romans, to hold the
sovereignty on such or such conditions, which, not performed, the
Romans might depose the Roman people." In which there be several
remarkable things; for he holds the Commonwealth of Rome to have
consisted of one assembly, whereas it consisted of the Senate and the
people; that they were not upon covenant, whereas every law enacted
by them was a covenant between them; that the one assembly was
made sovereign, whereas the people, who only were sovereign, were
such from the beginning, as appears by the ancient style of their
covenants or laws -- "The Senate has resolved, the people have
decreed," that a council being made sovereign, cannot be made such
upon conditions, whereas the Decemvirs being a council that was made
sovereign, was made such upon conditions; that all conditions or
covenants making a sovereign being made, are void; whence it must
follow that, the Decemviri being made, were ever after the lawful
government of Rome, and that it was unlawful for the Commonwealth
of Rome to depose the Decemvirs; as also that Cicero, if he wrote
otherwise out of his commonwealth, did not write out of nature. But to
come to others that see more of this balance.
You have Aristotle full of it in divers places, especially where he says,
that "immoderate wealth, as where one man or the few have greater
possessions