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 institution 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
constitution of the orb of ambassador-in-ordinary, consisting of four
residences, the revolution whereof is performed in eight years, and
preserved through the election of one ambassador 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
space 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
ambassador-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 accumulate 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.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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