mariots;
aristocratically that is, by earls and barons, as the Neustrians were
planted by Turbo; or democratically, that is, by equal lots, as the
Israelitish army in the land of Canaan by Joshua. In every one of these
ways there must not only be confiscations, but confiscations to such a
proportion as may answer to the work intended.

Confiscation of a people that never fought against you, but whose arms
you have borne, and in which you have been victorious, and this upon
premeditation and in cold blood, I should have thought to be against
any example in human nature, but for those alleged by Machiavel
of Agathocles, and Oliveretto di Fermo, the former whereof being
captain-general of the Syracusans, upon a day assembled the Senate and
the people, as if he had something to communicate with them, when at a
sign given he cut the senators in pieces to a man, and all the richest
of the people, by which means he came to be king. The proceedings of
Oliveretto, in making himself Prince of Fermo, were somewhat different
in circumstances, but of the same nature. Nevertheless Catiline, who
had a spirit equal to any of these in his intended mischief, could never
bring the like to pass in Rome. The head of a small commonwealth, such
a one as was that of Syracuse or Fermo, is easily brought to the block;
but that a populous nation, such as Rome, had not such a one, was the
grief of Nero. If Sylvia or Caesar attained to be princes, it was by
civil war, and such civil war as yielded rich spoils, there being a vast
nobility to be confiscated; which also was the case in Oceana, when
it yielded earth by earldoms, and baronies to the Neustrian for the
plantation of his new potentates. Where a conqueror finds the riches of
a land in the hands of the few, the forfeitures are easy, and amount to
vast advantage; but where the people have equal shares, the confiscation
of many comes to little, and is not only dangerous but fruitless.

The Romans, in one of their defeats of the Volsci, found among the
captives certain Tusculans, who, upon examination, confessed that the
arms they bore were by command of their State; whereupon information
being given to the Senate by the general Camillus, he was forthwith
commanded to march against Tusculum which doing accordingly, he found
the Tusculan fields full of husbandmen, that stirred not otherwise from
the plough than to furnish his army with all kinds of accommodations
and victuals. Drawing near to t