The capital, which we shall call London, may be allowed four members in the senate. It may therefore be divided into four counties. The representatives of each of these choose one senator and ten magistrates. There are {p222} therefore in the city four senators, forty-four magistrates, and four hundred representatives. The magistrates have the same authority as in the counties. The representatives also have the same authority; but they never meet in one general court. They give their votes in their particular county or division of hundreds.
When they enact any city-law, the greatest number of counties or divisions determines the matter; and where these are equal, the magistrates have the casting vote.
The magistrates choose the mayor, sheriff, recorder, and other officers of the city.
In the commonwealth, no representative, magistrate, or senator, as such, has any salary. The protector, secretaries, councils, and ambassadors have salaries.
The first year in every century is set apart to correct all inequalities which time may have produced in the representative. This must be done by the legislature.
The following political aphorisms may explain the reason of these orders.
The lower sort of people and small proprietors are good enough judges of one not very distant from them in rank or habitation, and therefore, in their parochial meetings, will probably choose the best, or nearly the best representative; but they are wholly unfit for county-meetings and for electing into the higher offices of the republic. Their ignorance gives the grandees an opportunity of deceiving them.
Ten thousand, even though they were not annually elected, are a large enough basis for any free government. It is true the nobles in Poland are more than 10,000, and yet these oppress the people; but as power continues there always in the same persons and families, this makes them, in a manner, a different nation from the people. Besides, the nobles are there united under a few heads of families.
All free governments must consist of two councils, a less and a greater; or, in other words, of a senate and people. The people, as Harrington observes, would want wisdom without the senate; the senate without the people would want honesty. {p223}
A large assembly of 1000, for instance, to represent the people, if allowed to debate, would fall into disorder. If not allowed to debate, the senate has a negative upon them, and the worst kind of negative—that before resolution.