For except the people be methodically distributed, they cannot be methodically collected; but the being of a commonwealth consists in the methodical collection of the people: wherefore you have the Israelitish divisions into rulers of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties, and of tens; and of the whole commonwealth into tribes: the Laconic into oboe, moras, and tribes; the Roman into tribes, centuries, and classes; and something there must of necessity be in every government of the like nature, as that in the late monarchy--by counties. But this being the only institution in Oceana, except that of the agrarian, which required any charge or included any difficulty, engages me to a more particular description of the manner how it was performed, as follows: A thousand surveyors, commissioned and instructed by the Lord Archon and the Council, being divided into two equal numbers, each under the inspection of two surveyors-general, were distributed into the northern and southern parts of the territory, divided by the river Hemisua, the whole whereof contains about 10,000 parishes, some ten of those being assigned to each surveyor; for as to this matter there needed no great exactness, it tending only by showing whither everyone was to, begin, to the more orderly carrying repair and whereabout to on of the work; the nature of their instructions otherwise regarding rather the number of the inhabitants than of the parishes. The surveyors, therefore, being every one furnished with a convenient proportion of urns, balls, and balloting-boxes--in the use whereof they had been formerly exercised--and now arriving each at his respective parish, being with the people by teaching them their first lesson, which was the ballot; and though they found them in the beginning somewhat froward, as at toys, with which, while they were in expectation of greater matters from a Council of legislators, they conceived themselves to be abused, they came within a little while to think them pretty sport, and at length such as might very soberly be used in good earnest; whereupon the surveyors began the institution included in--