The Commonwealth of Oceana

by James Harrington

“‘These things considered, it is plain that the Roman legislators, to have introduced a quiet state, must have done one of these two things: either shut out strangers, as the Lacedemonians; or, as the Venetians, not allowed the people to bear arms. But they did neither. By which means the people, having power and increase, were in perpetual tumult. Nor is this to be helped in a commonwealth for increase, seeing if Rome had cut off the occasion of her tumults, she must have cut off the means of her increase, and by consequence of her greatness.

“‘Wherefore let a legislator consider with himself whether he would make his commonwealth for preservation, in which case she may be free from tumults; or for increase, in which case she must be infested with them.

“‘If he makes her for preservation, she may be quiet at home, but will be in danger abroad. First, because her foundation must be narrow, and therefore weak, as that of Lacedaemon, which lay but upon 30,000 citizens; or that of Venice, which lies but upon 3,000. Secondly, such a commonwealth must either be in peace, or war; if she be in peace, the few are soonest effeminated and corrupted and so obnoxious also to faction. If in war, succeeding ill, she is an easy prey; or succeeding well, ruined by increase: a weight which her foundation is not able to bear. For Lacedaemon, when she had made herself mistress upon the matter of all Greece, through a slight accident, the rebellion of Thebes, occasioned by the conspiracy of Pelopidas discovering this infirmity of her nature, the rest of her conquered cities immediately fell off, and in the turn as it were of a hand reduced her from the fullest tide to the lowest ebb of her fortune. And Venice having possessed herself of a great part of Italy by her purse, was no sooner in defence of it put to the trial of arms than she lost all in one battle.

“‘Whence I conclude that in the ordination of a commonwealth a legislator is to think upon that which is most honorable, and, laying aside models for preservation, to follow the example of Rome conniving at, and temporizing with, the enmity between the Senate and the people, as a necessary step to the Roman greatness. For that any man should find out a balance that may take in the conveniences and shut out the inconveniences of both, I do not think it possible.’ These are the words of the author, though the method be somewhat altered, to the end that I may the better turn them to my purpose.

“My lords, I do not know how you hearken to this sound; but to hear the greatest artist in the modern world giving sentence against our commonwealth is that with which I am nearly concerned. Wherefore, with all honor due to the prince of politicians, let us examine his reasoning with the same liberty which he has asserted to be the right of a free people. But we shall never come up to him, except by taking the business a little lower, we descend from effects to their causes. The causes of commotion in a commonwealth are either external or internal. External are from enemies, from subjects, or from servants. To dispute then what was the cause why Rome was infested by the Italian, or by the servile wars; why the slaves took the capitol; why the Lacedaemonians were near as frequently troubled with their helots as Rome with all those; or why Venice, whose situation is not trusted to the faith of men, has as good or better quarter with them whom she governs, than Rome had with the Latins; were to dispute upon external causes. The question put by Machiavel is of internal causes; whether the enmity that Was between the Senate and the people of Rome might have been removed. And to determine otherwise of this question than he does, I must lay down other principles than he has done. To which end I affirm that a commonwealth, internally considered, is either equal or unequal. A commonwealth that is internally equal, has no internal cause of commotion, and therefore can have no such effect but from without. A commonwealth internally unequal has no internal cause of quiet, and therefore can have no such effect but by diversion.

“To prove my assertions, I shall at this time make use of no other than his examples. Lacedaemon was externally unquiet, because she was externally unequal, that is as to her helots; and she was internally at rest, because she was equal in herself, both in root and branch; in the root by her agrarian, and in branch by the Senate, inasmuch as no man was thereto qualified but by election of the people. Which institution of Lycurgus is mentioned by Aristotle, where he says that rendering his citizens emulous (not careless) of that honor, he assigned to the people the election of the Senate. Wherefore Machiavel in this, as in other places, having his eye upon the division of patrician and plebeian families as they were in Rome, has quite mistaken the orders of this commonwealth, where there was no such thing. Nor did the quiet of it derive from the power of the kings, who were so far from shielding the people from the injury of the nobility, of which there was none in his sense but the Senate, that one declared end of the Senate at the institution was to shield the people from the kings, who from that time had but single votes. Neither did it proceed from the straitness of the Senate, or their keeping the people excluded from the government, that they were quiet, but from the equality of their administration, seeing the Senate (as is plain by the oracle, their fundamental law) had no more than the debate, and the result of the commonwealth belonged to the people.

“Wherefore when Theopompus and Polydorus, Kings of Lacedaemon, would have kept the people excluded from the government by adding to the ancient law this clause, ‘If the determination of the people be faulty, it shall be lawful for the Senate to resume the debate,’ the people immediately became unquiet, and resumed that debate, which ended not till they had set up their ephors, and caused that magistracy to be confirmed by their kings.” For when Theopompus first ordained that the ephori or overseers should be created at Lacedaemon, to be such a restraint upon the kings there as the tribunes were upon the consuls at Rome, the Queen complained to him, that by this means he transmitted the royal authority greatly diminished to his children: “I leave indeed less,” answered he, “but more lasting.” And this was excellently said; for that power only is safe which is limited from doing hurt. Theopompus therefore, by confining the kingly power within the bounds of the laws, did recommend it by so much to the people’s affection as he removed it from being arbitrary.’ By which it may appear that a commonwealth for preservation, if she comes to be unequal, is as obnoxious to enmity between the Senate and the people as a commonwealth for increase; and that the tranquillity of Lacedaemon was derived from no other cause than her equality.

“For Venice, to say that she is quiet because she disarms her subjects, is to forget that Lacedaemon disarmed her helots, and yet could not in their regard be quiet; wherefore if Venice be defended from external causes of commotion, it is first through her situation, in which respect her subjects have no hope (and this indeed may be attributed to her fortune); and, secondly, through her exquisite justice, whence they have no will to invade her. But this can be attributed to no other cause than her prudence, which will appear to be greater, as we look nearer; for the effects that proceed from fortune, if there be any such thing, are like their cause, inconstant. But there never happened to any other commonwealth so undisturbed and constant a tranquillity and peace in herself as are in that of Venice; wherefore this must proceed from some other cause than chance. And we see that as she is of all others the most quiet, so the most equal commonwealth. Her body consists of one order, and her Senate is like a rolling stone, as was said, which never did, nor, while it continues upon that rotation, never shall gather the moss of a divided or ambitious interest, much less such a one as that which grasped the people of Rome in the talons of their own eagles. And if Machiavel, averse from doing this commonwealth right, had considered her orders, as his reader shall easily perceive he never did, he must have been so far from attributing the prudence of them to chance, that he would have touched up his admirable work to that perfection which, as to the civil part, has no pattern in the universal world but this of Venice.

“Rome, secure by her potent and victorious arms from all external causes of commotion, was either beholden for her peace at home to her enemies abroad, or could never rest her head. My lords, you that are parents of a commonwealth, and so freer agents than such as are merely natural, have a care. For, as no man shall show me a commonwealth born straight that ever became crooked, so no man shall show me a commonwealth born crooked that ever became straight. Rome was crooked in her birth, or rather prodigious. Her twins, the patrician and plebeian orders, came, as was shown by the foregoing story, into the world, one body but two heads, or rather two bellies; for, notwithstanding the fable out of AEsop, whereby Menenius Agrippa, the orator that was sent from the Senate to the people at Mount Aventin, showed the fathers to be the belly, and the people to be the arms and the legs (which except that, how slothful soever it might seem, they were nourished, not these only, but the whole body must languish and be dissolved), it is plain that the fathers were a distinct belly, such a one as took the meat indeed out of the people’s mouths, but abhorring the agrarian, returned it not in the due and necessary nutrition of a commonwealth. Nevertheless, as the people that live about the cataracts of Nilus are said not to hear the noise, so neither the Roman writers, nor Machiavel the most conversant with them, seem among so many of the tribunitian storms to hear their natural voice; for though they could not miss of it so far as to attribute them to the strife of the people for participation in magistracy, or, in which Machiavel more particularly joins, to that about the agrarian, this was to take the business short, and the remedy for the disease.

“A people, when they are reduced to misery and despair, become their own politicians, as certain beasts, when they are sick, become their own physicians, and are carried by a natural instinct to the desire of such herbs as are their proper cure; but the people, for the greater part, are beneath the beasts in the use of them. Thus the people of Rome, though in their misery they had recourse by instinct, as it were, to the two main fundamentals of a commonwealth, participation of magistracy and the agrarian, did but taste and spit at them, not (which is necessary in physic) drink down the potion, and in that their healths. For when they had obtained participation of magistracy it was but lamely, not to a full and equal rotation in all elections; nor did they greatly regard it in what they had got. And when they had attained to the agrarian, they neglected it so far as to suffer the law to grow obsolete; but if you do not take the due dose of your medicines (as there be slight tastes which a man may have of philosophy that incline to atheism) it may chance to be poison, there being a like taste of the politics that inclines to confusion, as appears in the institution of the Roman tribunes, by which magistracy and no more the people were so far from attaining to peace, that they in getting but so much, got but heads for an eternal feud; whereas if they had attained in perfection either to the agrarian, they had introduced the equality and calm of Lacedaemon, or to rotation, and they had introduced that of Venice: and so there could have been no more enmity between the Senate and the people of Rome than there was between those orders in Lacedaemon, or is now in Venice. Wherefore Machiavel seems to me, in attributing the peace of Venice more to her luck than her prudence, of the whole stable to have saddled the wrong horse; for though Rome in her military part could beat it better, beyond all comparison, upon the sounding hoof, Venice for the civil part has plainly had the wings of Pegasus.