in a citadel, but not from his diseases; wherefore the first cause, if
he lives long, is his good constitution, 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 circumferences 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 constitute the Senate; the deputies,
the prerogative tribe, commonly called the people; and the Senate and
people constitute 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 space 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, assemble in the house or hall
of the Senate.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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