“The services performed by the youth, or by the elders, in case of
invasion, and according to this order, shall be at their proper cost and
charges that are any ways able to endure it; but if there be such as are
known in their parishes to be so indigent that they cannot march out of
their tribes, nor undergo the burden in this case incumbent, then the
congregations of their parishes shall furnish them with sufficient sums
of money to be repaid upon the certificate of the same by the Parliament
when the action shall be over. And of that which is respectively
enjoined by this order, any tribe, parish, magistrate, or person that
shall fail, is to answer for it, at the Council of War, as a deserter of
his country.”
The Archon, being the greatest captain of his own, if not of any age,
added much to the glory of this commonwealth, by interweaving the
militia with more art and lustre than any legislator from or before the
time of Servius Tullius, who constituted the Roman militia. But as the
bones or skeleton of a man, though the greatest part of his beauty be
contained in their proportion or symmetry, yet shown without flesh are a
spectacle that is rather horrid than entertaining, so without discourses
are the orders of a commonwealth; which, if she goes forth in that
manner, may complain of her friends that they stand mute and staring
upon her. Wherefore this order was thus fleshed by the Lord Archon:
“MY LORDS:
“Diogenes seeing a young fellow drunk, told him that his father was
drunk when he begot him. For this, in natural generation, I must confess
I see no reason; but in the political it is right. The vices of the
people are from their governors; those of their governors from
their laws or orders; and those of their laws or orders from their
legislators. Whatever was in the womb imperfect, as to her proper work,
comes very rarely or never at all to perfection afterward; and the
formation of a citizen in the womb of the commonwealth is his education.
“Education by the first of the foregoing orders is of six kinds: at the
school, in the mechanics, at the universities, at the inns of court or
chancery, in travels, and in military discipline, some of which I shall
but touch, and some I shall handle more at large.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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