“For the agrarian of Panopea, it allowing such proportions of so good
land, men that conceive themselves straitened by this in Oceana, will
begin there to let themselves forth, where every citizen will in time
have his villa. And there is no question, but the improvement of that
country by this means must be far greater than it has been in the best
of former times. I have no more to say, but that in those ancient and
heroic ages (when men thought that to be necessary which was virtuous)
the nobility of Athens, having the people so much engaged in their debt
that there remained no other question among these than which of those
should be king, no sooner heard Solon speak than they quitted their
debts, and restored the commonwealth; which ever after held a solemn
and annual feast called the Sisacthia, or Recision, in memory of that
action. Nor is this example the phoenix; for at the institution by
Lycurgus, the nobility having estates (as ours here) in the lands of
Laconia, upon no other valuable consideration than the commonwealth
proposed by him, threw them up to be parcelled by his agrarian. But
now when no man is desired to throw up a farthing of his money, or a
shovelful of his earth, and that all we can do is but to make a virtue
of necessity, we are disputing whether we should have peace or war.
For peace you cannot have without some government, nor any government
without the proper balance. Wherefore if you will not fix this which you
have, the rest is blood, for without blood you can bring in no other.”
By these speeches made at the institution of the agrarian you may
perceive what were the grounds of it. The next is--
The fourteenth order, “Constituting the ballot of Venice, as it is
fitted by several alterations, and appointed to every assembly, to
be the constant and only way of giving suffrage in this commonwealth,
according to the following scheme.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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