About the one-and-fortieth year of the commonwealth, the censors, according to their annual custom, reported the pillar of Nilus, by which it was found that the people were increased very near one-third. Whereupon the Council of War was appointed by the Senate to bring in a state of war, and the treasurers the state of the Treasury. The state of war, or the pay and charge of an army, was soon after exhibited by the Council in this account:
THE FIELD PAY OF A PARLIAMENTARY ARMY
The lord strategus, marching £10,000
Polemarches—
General of the horse... 2,000
Lieutenant-general... 2,000
General of the artillery.... 1,000
Commissary-general... 1,000
Major-general.... 1,000
Quartermaster-general... 1,000
Two adjutants to the major-general... 1,000
Forty colonels..... 40,000
100 captains of horse, at £500 a man... 50,000
300 captains of foot, at £300 a man... 90,000
100 cornets, at £100 a man.... 10,000
300 ensigns, at £50 a man.... 15,000
800 Quartermasters, Sergeants, Trumpeters,
Drummers, 20,000
10,000 horse, at 2s 6d per day each... 470,000
30,000 foot, at 1s per day each.... 500,000
Chirurgeons... 400
40,000 auxiliaries, amounting to within a
little as much... 1,100,000
The charge of mounting 20,000 horse.. 300,000
The train of artillery, holding a 3d to
the whole 900,000
Sum total £3,514,400
Arms and ammunition are not reckoned, as those which are
furnished out of the store or arsenal of Emporium: nor wastage,
as that which goes upon the account of the fleet, maintained by
the customs; which customs, through the care of the Council for
Trade and growth of traffic, were long since improved to about
£1,000,000 revenue. The house being thus informed of a state of
war, the commissioners brought in—
THE STATE OF THE TREASURY THIS PRESENT YEAR, BEING THE
ONE-AND-FORTIETH OF THE COMMONWEALTH
Received from the one-and-twentieth of the commonwealth:
By £700,000 a year in bank, with the product of the sum
rising..............
£16,000,000
Expended from the one-and-twentieth of this commonwealth:
Imprimis, for the addition of arms for 100,000 men to
the arsenal, or tower of Emporium.........
£1,000,000
For the storing of the same with artillery...
300,000
For the storing of the same with ammunition...
200,000
For beautifying the cities, parks, gardens, public walks,
and places for recreation of Emporium and Hiera, with
public buildings, aqueducts, statues,
and fountains, etc......
1,500,000
Extraordinary embassies...
150,000
Sum........
£3,150,000
Remaining in the Treasury, the salaries of the
Exchequer being defalked.......
£12,000,000
By comparison of which accounts if a war with an army of 80,000 men were to be made by the penny, yet was the commonwealth able to maintain such a one above three years without levying a tax. But it is against all experience, sense, and reason that such an army should not be soon broken, or make a great progress; in either of which cases, the charge ceases; or rather if a right course be taken in the latter, profit comes in: for the Romans had no other considerable way but victory whereby to fill their treasury, which nevertheless was seldom empty. Alexander did not consult his purse upon his design for Persia: it is observed by Machiavel, that Livy, arguing what the event in reason must have been had that King invaded Rome, and diligently measuring what on each side was necessary to such a war, never speaks a word of money. No man imagines that the Gauls, Goths, Vandals, Huns, Lombards, Saxons, Normans, made their inroads or conquests by the strength of the purse; and if it be thought enough, according to the dialect of our age, to say in answer to these things that those times are past and gone: what money did the late Gustavus, the most victorious of modern princes, bring out of Sweden with him into Germany? An army that goes upon a golden leg will be as lame as if it were a wooden one; but proper forces have nerves and muscles in them, such for which, having £4,000,000 or £5,000,000, a sum easy enough, with a revenue like this of Oceana, to be had at any time in readiness, you need never, or very rarely, charge the people with taxes. What influence the commonwealth by such arms has had upon the world, I leave to historians, whose custom it has been of old to be as diligent observers of foreign actions as careless of those domestic revolutions which (less pleasant it may be, as not partaking so much of the romance) are to statesmen of far greater profit; and this fault, if it be not mine, is so much more frequent with modern writers, as has caused me to undertake this work; on which to give my own judgment, it is performed as much above the time I have been about it, as below the dignity of the matter.
But I cannot depart out of this country till I have taken leave of my Lord Archon, a prince of immense felicity who having built as high with his counsels as he digged deep with his sword, had now seen fifty years measured with his own unerring orbs.
Timoleon (such a hater of tyrants that, not able to persuade his brother Timophanes to relinquish the tyranny of Corinth, he slew him) was afterward elected by the people (the Sicilians groaning to them from under the like burden) to be sent to their relief: whereupon Teleclides, the man at that time of most authority in the Commonwealth of Corinth, stood up, and giving an exhortation to Timoleon, how he should behave himself in this expedition, told him that if he restored the Sicilians to liberty, it would be acknowledged that he destroyed a tyrant; if otherwise, he must expect to hear he had murdered a king. Timoleon, taking his leave with a very small provision for so great a design, pursued it with a courage not inferior to, and a felicity beyond, any that had been known to that day in mortal flesh, having in the space of eight years utterly rooted out of all Sicily those weeds of tyranny, through the detestation whereof men fled in such abundance from their native country that whole cities were left desolate, and brought it to such a pass that others, through the fame of his virtues and the excellency of the soil, flocked as fast from all quarters to it as to the garden of the world: while he, being presented by the people of Syracuse with his town-house and his country retreat, the sweetest places in either, lived with his wife and children a most quiet, happy, and holy life; for he attributed no part of his success to himself, but all to the blessing and providence of the gods. As he passed his time in this manner, admired and honored by mankind, Laphistius, an envious demagogue, going to summon him upon some pretence or other to answer for himself before the assembly, the people fell into such a mutiny as could not be appeased but by Timoleon, who, understanding the matter, reproved them, by repeating the pains and travel which he had gone through, to no other end than that every man might have the free use of the laws. Wherefore when Daemenetus, another demagogue, had brought the same design about again, and blamed him impertinently to the people for things which he did when he was general, Timoleon answered nothing, but raising up his hands, gave the gods thanks for their return to his frequent prayers, that he might but live to see the Syracusans so free, that they could question whom they pleased.
Not long after, being old, through some natural imperfection, he fell blind; but the Syracusans by their perpetual visits held him, though he could not see, their greatest object: if there arrived strangers, they brought him to see this sight. Whatever came in debate at the assembly, if it were of small consequence, they determined it themselves; but if of importance, they always sent for Timoleon, who, being brought by his servants in a chair, and set in the middle of the theatre, there ever followed a great shout, after which some time was allowed for the benedictions of the people; and then the matter proposed, when Timoleon had spoken to it, was put to the suffrage; which given, his servants bore him back in his chair, accompanied by the people clapping their hands, and making all expressions of joy and applause, till, leaving him at his house, they returned to the despatch of their business. And this was the life of Timoleon, till he died of age, and dropped like a mature fruit, while the eyes of the people were as the showers of autumn.
The life and death of my Lord Archon (but that he had his senses to the last, and that his character, as not the restorer, but the founder of a commonwealth, was greater) are so exactly the same, that (seeing by men wholly ignorant of antiquity I am accused of writing romance) I shall repeat nothing: but tell you that this year the whole nation of Oceana, even to the women and children, were in mourning, where so great or sad a funeral pomp had never been seen or known. Some time after the performance of the obsequies a Colossus, mounted on a brazen horse of excellent fabric, was erected in the piazza of the Pantheon, engraved with this inscription on the eastern side of the pedestal:
HIS NAME
IS AS
PRECIOUS OINTMENT
And on the wester with the following:
GRATA PATRIA
Piae et Perpetuae Memorie
D.D.
OLPHAUS MEGALETOR
LORD ARCHON, AND SOLE LEGISLATOR
OF
OCEANA
PATER PATRIAE
Invincible in the Field The Greatest of Captains
Inviolable in his Faith The Best of Princes
Unfeigned in his Zeal The Happiest of Legislators
Immortal in his Fame The Most Sincere of Christians
Who setting the Kingdoms of Earth at Liberty,
Took the Kingdom of the Heavens by Violence.
Anno AEtat. suoe 116
Hujus Reipub. 50