confess have been this day laughing at a sober man, but without meaning him any harm, and that is Petrus Cunaeus, where speaking of the nature of the people, he says, ‘that taking them apart, they are very simple, but yet in their assemblies they see and know something, and so runs away without troubling himself with what that something is. Whereas the people, taken apart, are but so many private interests; but if you take them together, they are the public interest. “The public interest of a commonwealth, as has been shown, is nearest that of mankind, and that of mankind is right reason; but with aristocracy (whose reason or interest, when they are all together, as appeared by the patricians, is but that of a party) it is quite contrary: for as, taken apart, they are far wiser than the people considered in that manner, so, being put together, they are such fools, who by deposing the people, as did those of Rome, will saw off the branch whereupon they sit, or rather destroy the root of their own greatness. Wherefore Machiavel, following Aristotle, and yet going before him, may well assert, ‘that the people are wiser and more constant in their resolutions than a prince:’ which is the prerogative of popular government for wisdom. And hence it is that the prerogative of your commonwealth, as for wisdom so for power, is in the people, which (though I am not ignorant that the Roman prerogative was so called a proerogando, because their suffrage was first asked) gives the denomination to your prerogative tribe.” The elections, whether annual or triennial, being shown by the twenty-second, that which comes in the next place to be considered is-- The twenty-third order, “Showing the power, function, and manner of proceeding of the prerogative tribe. “The power or function of the prerogative is of two parts: the one of result, in which it is the legislative, power, the other of judicature, in which regard it is the highest court, and the last appeal in this commonwealth.